[lbo-talk] Occupy Oakland's imminent implosion and the wider effects

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Sat Nov 5 14:17:52 PDT 2011


On 11/5/2011 4:30 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:


> as for stopping it, you could set up a system where you prove your
> street cred or party ID or charge a price for admission. Unless you've
> proven you're one of us and agreed to all we're about, then you can't
> be here. If they won't go away, call the cops. Or, you can hire your
> own cops and have the cops take them down. You can be your own cops
> and do same. There are problems with doing those things which will be
> more troubling to a budding movement (or an organization for that
> matter) than just putting up with the nutters, the conspiracy
> theorists, the folks smashing windows and using their interference in
> ways that can be productive.

You could have a collective agreement in advance on what tactic to use during an action when Black Bloc types pull these kinds of stunts. In the videos I've seen, there's inevitably a group of demonstrators trying to give the BB a hard time or even trying to physically stop them, but it all looks so haphazard and demoralized and always fails. It would be better if, for example, everyone knew that they were supposed to, say, stop, point, and -- without trying to stop the BB -- chant some pre-approved line in unison, like saboteurs. The BB does these things solely to create photo opps -- if the videos posted to the web the next day show them being heckled down by a big group of normal demonstrators who outnumbered them, it would ruin the effect they're trying to create.

SA



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