<> [If Purucker is a reliable index of currents, Occupy has in just a few <> months learned what the alterglobo movement never did.] <> <> Santa Rita, I Hate Every Inch of You <> Posted by Jeb Purucker â‹
February 6, 2012 <> <> [...] <> <> This logic broke down on Oak Street. Saturday clearly demonstrated the <> limits of a mode of organizing that has thus far been successful. Up <> until now, Occupy has involved a contradictory and unstable mixture of <> liberal and more radical elements held together by a thin tissue of <> stories of injustice and violated “rights.†This fact has led to <> endless unproductive disputes about the role of “violence†in our <> movement, of which Chris Hedges is just the most recent and banal <> example. The problem is that if our unity can be reduced to our shared <> victimization, we are reliant on police and civic officials to <> continually give us these stories. As police tactics adapt, and as the <> demands we make of the system become more radical, this will become <> increasingly difficult. The basis of the connections we make within <> the movement must involve a deeper sort of radicalization. The central <> antagonism is not between the police state and the people, but between <> labor and capital. The anti-police repression marches that are now <> happening weekly in Oakland, while focused on a crucial issue, tend to <> sideline this larger point. To the extent that this discourse <> dominates our practice, we are operating with exactly the same limited <> and moralizing conception of our movement’s unity as our liberal <> critics. The romanticized picture of the brutal repression of peaceful <> demonstrators that Hedges fetishizes is on a continuum with the images <> of victimization in many of our own actions. We need to tell a new <> story. <> <> [...] <> <> ___________________________________ <> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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