> On Oct 3, 2011, at 8:46 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>> if you just turn your back on all this and say, fuck that noise,
>> we're
>> going to get together and hold a big party and talk about what's
>> pissing us off because, sometimes, you don't really know why you're
>> pissed off or what you want until you've have a good long scream
>> about
>> it. so maybe it'd be good to find out who's out there, who else is
>> thinking like us.. sometimes, what matters is to speak to one
>> another
>> and creating a shared set of sub-cultural understandings, symbols,
>> and
>> practices.
>>
>> because one thing we know from the history of social movements is
>> this: they have to have a shared set of subcultural symbols and
>> practices. they have to have a shared language. protests, as several
>> studies have shown, are not only about speaking to some targeted
>> organization or institutions, it's mostly about speaking to each
>> other
>> - the people who share a point or points of view. and that's good
>> because it creates solidarity. and a movement ain't going to go
>> anywhere if they don't have practices that create and recreate
>> solidarity over the long haul.
>
>
> Exactly! SA writes in response:
>
> On Oct 3, 2011, at 9:17 PM, SA wrote:
>> By now I'm used to the widespread allergy to criticism of any kind.
>> What's surprising is to hear it from you -- you who unhesitatingly
>> gripes about everything and everybody under the sun. Nobody has to
>> pay any attention to my criticism. But if you really thought my
>> griping were irrelevant noise, I assume you'd just ignore it.
>
>
> There are different listeners here - we are okay with listening to
> your criticism and responding to it or ignoring it. Here on this list.
> But the more important question is should the protestors listen to
> your criticism? (or for that matter, any of ours!). And the answer is
> the above section from shag. That’s because (IMHO) their process
> (consciously or otherwise) is different from the sort of thing you are
> using, at a meta level. They are not at the state of “prefiguring” the
> future much less worrying about how to provision for a million people.
> They are at the stage shag describes above. If there is one thing then
> that we can say about their beliefs, then it is that they [implicitly
> perhaps] believe that this is the right first stage. I know your
> original response to Julio mentioned the bit about “prefigurement” as
> a caution (not as the central point) so I am not disagreeing directly
> with you here, but with the general idea that this effort is ready for
> rigorous criticism.
>
> They have a couple of things right off the get go - the idea of
> occupying a space (rather than just marching and going home). And the
> idea of targeting Wall St: the only concrete “goal” they have
> specified. In doing so, intentionally or not, they have hit upon a
> simple but powerful method which also pulls the rug from under the Tea
> Party.
>
> —ravi
SA - my point is that it seems like you're missing their main point.Here's what they want, right here:
"Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone."
their audience are people who want to join them. it's like a giant facebook invite to an event.
they know they are pissed off. they think other people are too.
the answer, right now, is to get people together and take back public space. interestingly, in spite of the supposed proliferation of free spaces with the internets, these folks think there aren't enough public spaces where they can discuss these issues....
come join us and start a process --
a process that we think can address the problem we face --
come join us to figure out what those problems are --
and generate solutions accessible to everyone --
come join us to help think through what the solutions might be and to help make sure those solutions makes sense for everyone who's interested in solving the problems we end up identifying
they are speaking to people who think there are some problems. they are speaking to people who are going to show up to delineate what those problem are.
So, that's their main point.
it's like the communist manifesto, only in this case, it's a call to show up in order to find the people who will be involved in the political processes, debates and discussions and who will take that experience and will end up drafting a new one.... the same way marx and engels drafted one out of the political turmoil of their era.
the main point isn't the laundry list of demands at the end the manifesto. the main point of the manifesto was everything leading up to those demands. no one pays much attention to the list of demands - unless you are in a social theory class asking, "Did marx have *any* positive vision of the good society or was it criticism of existing society all the way down..."
so too this call to solidarity. it's a call to solidarity. the list of political grievances isn't any more important than the stuff at the end of the manifesto. the real point of it was a call to take over free space and start a conversation with like minded people.
the audience isn't people who are going to bitch about the demands or bitch about the asterisk.
the audience is people deeply pissed off enough to get together and create free spaces within which to start talking about what exactly the problems are.
so, you can bitch all you want. so can doug. but bitching in the hopes that they will do something different to please you doesn't make sense of you aren't even understanding what their main message is. criticize their desire to take back free space. criticize their desire to start a conversation. criticize their desire to create a process to figure out what the important problems are. is there something wrong with this?
now, if you actually showed up and started attending meetings and had a discussion with them about this stuff, then you might get somewhere with it. they've invited you to show up and help them occupy a space, so they can take back that space, so we can start talking about the things that are wrong.
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)