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

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Sat Nov 5 18:35:25 PDT 2011


On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 2:22 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:

It may feel like it does that, but how exactly does that work?
>

That is an excellent question! And the answer, in both cases, remains to be seen. I don't think it's my place to defend either the breaking of a window or the occupation of a park - those who are doing that stuff today can choose whether to justify themselves publicly or not - but if I were forced to register a defense, I might say that each opens up a new space for political debate that otherwise simply wouldn't exist.

I remember, in the immediate aftermath of Seattle, some Black Bloc participants publicly arguing that their actions had transformed what might otherwise have been an easily-forgettable kind of civil disobedience (on a par with the recent Tar Sands action in Washington, DC) into a more substantial shift in the public discourse. It would be futile for me to wade into a debate from a decade ago, but as I previously said, they had a logic, and it wasn't inherently wrong.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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