Hasta La Creative!

Hey you nimble dreamers, wild cats and horizontals out there,

Our Spring offensive is building toward a climactic May uprising… time to come out of winter hibernation and play jazz like we’ve never played it before.

May 1 we leap into the new world with a mighty multinational General Strike. Wherever you are, No Work; No School; No Shopping. No illusions. No apologies. No business as usual. Into The Streets!

May 12, we intensify with three days of global action. Jammers in London, Lisbon, Paris, Marseilles, Helsinki, Cuzco, Barcelona, Quebec are already on board with more on the way. We’ll hold our assemblies, hash out our demands and start building a parallel society that can sustain autonomous, horizontal, revolutionary communities outside of corpo-consumerism … we stop begging and we start creating … we begin the change we want to see.

We scared the G8 away from Chicago and now some occupiers are planning #OCCUPYCAMPDAVID – a cacophonous carnival of tree-sits, lockdowns and nomadic encampments in the woods and nearby Thurmont. Bon Voyage! Others are upping the ante with #OCCUPYCHICAGO – a mobilization of anarchic swarms to shutdown the NATO summit.

And then one of the softer aesthetic moments of our Spring offensive could well be the #LAUGHRIOT on May 18, the day the G8 leaders meet in Camp David. There is something totally ludicrous, absurd, even insane about the eight most powerful people in the world deciding to do the people’s business people behind closed doors and razor wire fences. This veneer of legitimacy is our tragedy turned to farce.

As Aristotle observed, to laugh is uniquely human… Imagine the scene: first a few hundred of us, then a few thousand, then millions of people across the world — each in their own way, some individually, some collectively in flash mobs, offices, parks, encampments — all breaking out in uproarious laughter on May 18. This could be a delicious defining moment – the day when the people of the world have a good laugh together and, from that point on, start thinking differently about how the world should be governed.

Then we get ready for our next big challenge: How to Occupy the U.S. Presidential Election on November 6.

Time to play wild, spontaneous jazz as Miles Davis intended,

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

OccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #25, #26 and #27 / OccupyWallst.org / G8Protest.org / OccupyChi.org / CANG8.org / Takethesquare.net / OccupyMay1st.org / MayDayNYC.org / May12.net / Facebook / Twitter / Reddit

Police across the country are increasingly using extreme violence against occupiers. The weekly SF Bay Guardian recently revealed that Oakland police have received numerous complaints of excessive force. In a complaint from Oct. 25, an occupier says that “officers found a person alone, beat him, and broke his knee.” A complaint from a Jan. 7 march says that a police officer kneed an occupier in the back “causing his spine to break.” In New York City, media reports that an occupier’s rib was broken on the six-month anniversary of OWS. When the wounded occupier began having a seizure, she was denied medical attention while a crowd watched in horror. When occupiers from across the middle of America gathered in St. Louis, Missouri for the Occupy the Midwest regional summit, they too were also brutally beat back. Tazers were used, a dozen arrests were made, and several occupiers were led away with their faces covered in blood.

In the following eyewitness account, an occupier describes how it feels to be in confronted by extreme police brutality:

“For those that have never witnessed police violence, I want to make something clear. Nothing about this situation followed the prescription of an arrest – this media image of a “You are under arrest. You have the right…” is not what happens in real life. A friend said it best, what happened Thursday night was some gangsta shit. It was angry, vicious people jumping unarmed protesters and bystanders. It was an attack. It was intentional brutality. They did not follow any procedure of kettling, “less lethal” tactics, etc. Their actions were directly targeting individuals and beating the shit out of them. It was so fucked up.

I am traumatized. I am having flashbacks, and the more I try to make the motions of my mundane life the more vivid they become. Work, school, friendly conversations all seem completely devoid of meaning. All I can do is tell the story of my experience and force the people I surround myself with to question the society we participate in. I am so fucking angry.”

Read the whole story at https://antistatestl.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/a-personal-account-of-the-… and join the discussion below on how Occupy can overcome increasing police brutality.

For the last two months, Occupy UC Davis has been blockading a campus branch of U.S. Bank. Now, in a victory for Occupy that potentially gives birth to a new movement tactic, U.S. Bank has capitulated and permanently closed the branch.

U.S. Bank has been a visible symbol on campus of the corporatization and monied corruption of education in part because, as The Aggie campus newspaper explains, “in 2010, all students were required to get new ID cards with the U.S. Bank logo on the back.”

The tactic of the occupiers was simple, nonviolent and highly effective. The Aggie describes the scene: “the blockade became a daily ritual. Protesters — typically numbering around 15 — would arrive around noon, followed by an officer from the campus police department. Thirty minutes later, bank employees would leave and the entire process would be repeated the next day.”

A celebratory statement posted on Occupy UC Davis’s website said, “the blockade of the U.S. Bank was a real battle against the privatization agenda, and its closure is a victory… This is not enough, this is not the end.”

The victory at Davis opens a new tactical horizon for Occupy. Can the bank blockade tactic be replicated across the nation? Could shutting down big banks every day for a month be the tactical breakthrough we need for May?

The G8 retreat from Chicago to Camp David brings a new tactical dilemma to Occupy. Do we carry on with the old model, locating contested space and establishing a physical encampment? Or do we sojourn into an uncharted vector of resistance where symbolic space is transient, fluid and less-significant? Here’s the view of Occupier Sean Nolan. Have a read and weigh in.

After months of gestation, confusion, internal conflict, regrouping and rethinking, the Occupy movement has come through the winter, in my mind at least, for the better. Those of us who are focused on changing the way that this country’s “elected” (or shall I say, bought and paid for) officials do business are more focused than a diamond cutting laser. Those of us who are focused on making a true American Spring are prepared.

As many of you now may very well know, the G8 meeting in Chicago that was scheduled for the 18th of May, has been moved to Camp David, a secure military compound guarded by US Marines that houses the President for private formal or informal occasions. Now let me be clear, the G8 is a meeting between the eight most powerful leaders in the world to discuss “key issues” facing the geopolitical sphere. There is a G12 meeting, a G20, and so on.

URL: http://bornoutofbinary.blogspot.com/2012/03/occupycampdavid-and-occupyna…

Here’s the Occupy movements attempt to get some sanity into the Middle East. Read Chris Hedges’ most recent thoughts on #occupyAIPAC and beyond.

The battle for justice in the Middle East is our battle. It is part of the vast, global battle against the 1 percent. It is about living rather than dying. It is about communicating rather than killing. It is about love rather than hate. It is part of the great battle against the corporate forces of death that reign over us—the fossil fuel industry, the weapons manufacturers, the security and surveillance state, the speculators on Wall Street, the oligarchic elites who assault our poor, our working men and women, our children, one in four of whom depend on food stamps to eat, the elites who are destroying our ecosystem with its trees, its air and its water and throwing into doubt our survival as a species.

What is being done in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, is a pale reflection of what is slowly happening to the rest of us. It is a window into the rise of the global security state, our new governing system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” It is a reflection of a world where the powerful are not bound by law, either on Wall Street or in the shattered remains of the countries we invade and occupy, including Iraq with its hundreds of thousands of dead. And one of the greatest purveyors of this demented ideology of violence for the sake of violence, this flagrant disregard for the rule of domestic and international law, is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

URL: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/aipac_works_for_the_1_percent_20120304/

Mientras #OWS engloba una multiplicidad de tácticas, opiniones y grados de radicalismo político, es claro y evidente que el alma de Occupy es anticapitalista, y el deseo de un sistema diferente es un deseo de un movimiento de protesta cuyo alcance en nuestras vidas es más holístico. Ya se han hecho trabajos estimulantes para organizarse en diferentes comunidades y uno puede imaginarse la emergencia de una red dispersa, no sólo de asambleas generales pero también de comunas y cooperativas.

Cargamos con el viejo pesimismo teórico, diciéndonos que cualquier forma desarrollada y continuada de organización comunitaria sólo puede existir como un bolsillo autónomo que no supone ninguna amenaza al capitalismo. Pero apoyar formas autónomas y comunitarias de cuidado no es desmarcarse de las formas de acción directas y activas. Los aspectos positivos y negativos de la lucha contra el capitalismo deben trabajar conjuntamente los unos con los otros para reforzarse mutuamente. Las comunas, cooperativas y otras estructuras de apoyo social proporcionan una red de seguridad material que facilita la acción radical, permitiendo a las personas desprenderse del trabajo y de las deudas contraídas con la seguridad de que sus necesidades materiales van a estar cubiertas cuando así lo hagan.

Además, tales formas de organización pueden dar comienzo al proceso increíblemente difícil de crear confianza entre personas con pasados y experiencias radicalmente distintos, procurando apoyo para quienes lo necesitan, especialmente aquellos que han sufrido el colapso económico. Estas formas de organización enervarán al status-quo sustrayendo el tiempo y la energía de los participantes de sus roles como trabajadores asalariados y consumidores. Claro que #OWS ya ha empezado a hacer esto; muchos de nosotros que no disfrutamos del lujo de tener empleos altamente flexibles (es decir precarios) o quienes no se han dedicado todavía a la ocupación a tiempo completo (y ahora duermen en iglesias, sinagogas y viviendas privadas ofrecidas generosamente- y organizándose durante el día) ya dedicamos nuestras horas en la oficina leyendo clandestinamente los emails de los grupos de trabajo o artículos relacionados con occupy. Nuestro objetivo es conseguir un modo de vida menos esquizofrénico en el cual el efecto totalizador de Occupy en nuestros pensamientos se refleje en el grado en el que predomine en nuestras acciones, un modo de vida en el que nuestra política esté en concordancia con la manera en la que nos sustentamos. Para aquellos que están en contra del capitalismo esto significará evaluar nuestra audacia y examinar nuestra propia percepción del futuro. Tal y como observó Daniel Marcus: “No puede haber movimiento de comunas si la protesta es meramente una actividad extracurricular de los asalariados: los trabajadores tendrán que elegir si están con las comunas o con los jefes o administradores.”

La necesidad de nuevas estructuras de cuidado es tanto emocional como material. Muchos de nosotros estamos empezando a darnos cuenta de la amplitud de nuestra propia insatisfacción. Pasamos tiempo con amigos y amantes pero estos encuentros son contrapuntos transitorios a la anomia inducida por una cultura del individualismo. Trabajamos hacia el éxito, pero lo que constituye el éxito parece cada vez más vacío. Quizás sea anticuado hablar de “alienación”, quizás sea naïf afirmar qué formas de trabajo o qué actividades puedan comenzar a vencerla; quizás sea utópico creer en que podríamos crear una sociedad en la que una vida mejor sea posible. Ya vemos la posibilidad de estas cosas en el futuro cercano de este movimiento y ya estamos empezando a construir la infraestructura necesaria.

El afecto no sólo es un efecto, sino una herramienta decisiva de la revolución. Así como la catársis de la resistencia que experimentamos en otoño reforzó el espíritu de comunidad y nos alentó a ir más lejos, habrá plasmaciones holísticas de Occupy, más comunitarias, auto-suficientes que afianzarán y reforzarán aún más al movimiento. Somos más fuertes cuando nuestra resistencia se inspira en nuestra indignación pero cuando también aprovecha nuestras fuerzas vitales, extendiéndose a la base material y psicológica de nuestras vidas.

En primavera debemos redescubrir que hay tipos militantes de comunidad y formas de cuidado insurrecionarias.

Nicole Demby es escritora y crítica y vive en Brooklyn. Es miembro del Arts & Labor group (Grupo de Trabajo de Arte y Trabajo de Occupy Wall Street).

Translated by the Translator Brigades – translatorbrigades@gmail.com

A tous les rédempteurs, rebelles et radicaux :

Alors que le soulèvement global frémit au sein de milliers de villes et de douzaines de pays, un sommet rare aura lieu simultanément entre les G8 et NATO ce Mai ci. Les forces militaires et les élites politiques du monde, des chefs d’états, 7.500 officiaux provenant de 80 nations et plus de 2.500 journalistes seront présents.

Et nous y serons aussi.

Ce 1er mai, 50.000 personnes venant de tous les coins du monde se rassembleront à Chicago, dresseront des tentes, des cuisines, des barricades pacifiques et #OCCUPYCHICAGO pendant un mois. Avec un peu de chance, nous réaliserons la plus grande occupation multinationale d’une réunion au sommet que le monde ait connu.

Et cette fois nous n’allons pas tolérer le genre de répression policière qui eut lieu aux manifestations de la Convention Démocrate Nationale à Chicago en 1968 … pas plus que nous respecterons les fausses restrictions que la ville de Chicago puisse tenter d’imposer sur nos premiers droits d’amendement. Nous y irons la tête haute et nous nous assemblerons pendant un sommet d’un mois … nous marcherons et chanterons et crierons et nous exercerons notre droit de communiquer a nos représentants ce que nous désirons … la constitution sera notre guide.

Et lorsque les G8 et NATO se rencontreront derrière portes fermées le 19 mai, nos demandes seront prêtes : une taxe « Robin des Bois » … une interdiction du commerce « flash » a haute fréquence … un engagement sur le changement climatique … une loi « retrait sur trois prises » pour les criminels d’entreprises … une initiative tous azimuts pour un Moyen Orient sans activité nucléaire … quelles que soient les décisions prises dans nos assemblées générales et notre remue-méninges global sur internet — nous, le peuple, décideront de l’agenda pour les prochaines années, et nous exigeront que nos dirigeants l’exécute.

Et s’ils ne nous écoutent pas … s’ils ignorent nos demandes comme ils ont pu le faire tant de fois auparavant … alors, avec une férocité Gandhienne, nous irons dans les rues, fermerons les bourses, les campus, les quartiers généraux d’entreprises et les villes autour du globe … nous rendrons le prix de continuer à faire du business comme d’habitude trop élevé pour être supporté.

Rédempteurs, amenez vos tentes et votre courage, et préparez-vous au big bang à Chicago ce printemps. Si nous ne levons pas maintenant pour lutter pour un futur différent, nous n’en aurons peut-être pas un. Alors vivons sans temps-mort pendant un moi ce mai-ci, et nous verrons ce qui se passera.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

CANG8.org / ChicagoMassAction.org / Occupy Chicago
Adbusters / Facebook / Twitter / Reddit

Traduit par Julie Cornu

Part of an ongoing debate within the Occupy community, author Chris Hedges says that our lessons should be drawn from the visionary philosophy of Czech revolutionary Vaclav Havel, not the “diversity of tactics” of the Black Bloc. “Living in Truth,” Havel’s ideal of refusal to fear, begins when we create alternative means of existence and deny the impulse to expected responses. States are well equipped to deal with the loss of order and violence but are inept at dealing with loss of faith and mass non-violence, Hedges argues. That is why government agitators and provocateurs are actively involved in the movement – to divide it and conquer its 99% appeal.

There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this. Physically eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create rival organizations—the group Stand for Oakland seems to be one of these attempts—to discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries, a tactic carried out consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, by an anonymous West Coast group known as OLAASM—Occupy Los Angeles Anti Social Media. Provoke the movement—or front groups acting in the name of the movement—to carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political alternative. In the war in El Salvador it was Jose Napoleon Duarte. For the Occupy movement it is someone like Van Jones. And use this “reformist” to co-opt the language of the movement and promise to promote the movement’s core aims through the electoral process.

Read the entire piece on Truthdig.com.

David Graeber has been involved with Occupy Wall Street since the early days of September, when he partook in the first ad hoc general assemblies in New York City and helped articulate the movements’ nonviolent ethos. He is also a self-professed anarchist and Black Bloc supporter.

In response to Chris Hedges Feb 6 article on Truthdig.com, The Cancer in Occupy, Graeber drafted the following open letter challenging the Pulitzer Prize winning authors’ characterization of the Black Bloc and the movement itself.

I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.

I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isn’t.)

I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.

URL: http://nplusonemag.com/concerning-the-violent-peace-police

Mirrors: http://pastebin.com/XK9Ucvu7 | http://bit.ly/xG0NWD

Three days after Adbusters put out a call to #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month during the May G8/NATO summits, spectacular clashes erupted between #OCCUPYOAKLAND militants and armored police. Attempts to occupy an abandoned building were put down with tear gas, less-lethal munitions and baton charges. What was new, and surprising, this time around was that some Oakland occupiers came equipped as altermodern Hoplites with plastic and tin shields. And to everyone’s amazement they performed an eerie quasi-military discipline and phalanx formation that had clearly been worked out beforehand. They came ready and willing to confront police. On a symbolic level, the Oakland street battle struck a chord in the movement because its theatrical staging functioned as an inverted repetition of the Brooklyn Bridge arrests that electrified the first phase of Occupy.

In both cases, a group of protesters engaged in the ostensibly illegal behavior (blocking traffic, occupying space) courageously faced down police while spectators, journalists, photographers recorded the scene from the left flank on higher ground. Both events are watershed moments that define phases of the movement. #OCCUPYOAKLAND’s phalanx and #OCCUPYWALLSTREET’s mass arrest represent different, at times compatible and sometimes conflicting, futures of #OCCUPY. That is why #OCCUPYOAKLAND’s public performance of a West Coast anarchist ethos has sent a chill down the international spine of #OCCUPY, sparking raging debates on many movement email lists.

At stake is not who will determine the future of #OCCUPYWALLSTREET. At stake is who will determine the future of #OCCUPY… which is to say what vision of the movement will emerge during the next big showdown, #OCCUPYCHICAGO in May?

Until now many people have believed that #OCCUPYWALLSTREET is synonymous with #OCCUPY and that the beautiful spirit of Zuccotti will forever dictate how the movement unfolds. But this assumption is fracturing as it becomes clear that the movement is actually comprised of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of autonomous forces acting in concert. The perfect example is OccupyWallSt.org, the flagship website of the movement which is not itself of, or beholden to, the movement. Coding for the site began weeks before any on-the-ground meetings were held in NYC. OccupyWallSt.org explains that they are an autonomous “affinity group” that is not “a subcommittee of the NYCGA nor affiliated with Adbusters, Anonymous or any other organization” which means that they do not receive orders from nor accept the authority of any of these organizations, including the General Assembly of NYC. They are allies but nonetheless autonomous. Of course, this is the same position that Adbusters, Anonymous and the NYCGA take in regards to each other as well. And, when you think about it, it is also the same position that your local #OCCUPY might take towards the dictates of #OCCUPYOAKLAND, #OCCUPYCHICAGO or even #OCCUPYWALLSTREET.

With today’s hindsight it is obvious that what have been called the core principles of the #OCCUPY movement have been overdetermined by an East Coast vibe inherited from the pre-September 17 meetings of the NYC General Assembly, another organization that predates #OCCUPY but has been considered synonymous with it. It was in these meetings that consensus-based general assemblies were agreed upon as the model. It is interesting to read the various declarations of the NYC General Assembly in light of the waning influence that New York occupiers over #OCCUPY as a whole. In these declarations, for example, one detects a frequent slippage between the NYCGA speaking for itself and speaking for the movement as a whole. This used to make sense but it no longer does as murmurs on the West Coast suggest a growing sentiment that the folks on the East Coast have gotten a bit too comfortable with the NGOs, unions and behind-the-scenes power-brokers in DC that the movement explicitly rejected before September 17. #OCCUPYOAKLAND’s powerful emergence is a symptom of the fracturing of the movement as various autonomous forces push-and-pull the movement in new, surprising directions.

The consensus of the movement over itself has been lost. It will take weeks, perhaps months, for these debates to simmer into discussions and then be settled within the movement. Ultimately, the matter will not be decided until we see what plays out in Chicago when the world’s supposed leaders meet and 2,500 journalists are watching. The situation is made all the more difficult because consensus decisions in New York City cannot dictate the consensus in Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland or Chicago. Inter-occupy conference calls are now happening to address this reality. And perhaps even more significant is the looming possibility of multiple #OCCUPYs in the same city. If there are two #OCCUPYOAKLAND general assemblies, one which embraces militant street battles and one which does not, who is to say which has greater authority over the name? Or, what if there is a defunct #OCCUPYX and a new crop of people move in and claim to speak for #OCCUPYX? What is the relationship between a preexisting #OCCUPY and an autonomous group who comes in later, acts autonomously and claims the right to also speak in the name of that city’s #OCCUPY? The old answer would have been that all #OCCUPYs must abide by the declarations of the NYC General Assembly… but this no longer seems tenable.

Behind this soul searching is the unresolved question of whether a movement that fractures into smaller autonomous groups can still build and maintain a consensus larger than its individual parts. The answer is probably yes… after all, we’ve been doing it unconsciously up until now. What is different is that we’re being forced to acknowledge that autonomy is a core principle of the movement, for better or worse.

—Micah White