thanks to Jeff for pointing this out. Thought it was most excellent, especially since I just finished up O/R Press's Occupying Wall St. which has some excellent descriptions of some of the behind the scenes machinations, all of which make even the most sympathetic commentary from those who aren't actually involved look, well, idiotic (heh - inthe Greek sense of the word. lol)
From Boots' FB status:
<http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150516738123664&id=520078663>http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150516738123664&id=520078663
Ok. This may piss off some friends.
I think that if you're an academic writing published critiques of modern day mass movements, the only way to be honest and scientific in your critique is to be involved, on a day-to-day basis, in organizing some kind of mass movement.
Otherwise- even if you are a "left" academic, the only thing you are doing is telling people why they shouldn't be involved in a movement while showing that the best thing to do is to simply remain an academic. Yes, you may point to the way other movements in the past did it better. Those movements faced critiques from academics who refused to be involved in movements as well. Soon, you will be teaching classes about the OWS movement. Will you be able to tell your students that you were involved? I hope so, otherwise they'd learn the wrong lesson.
Not being involved in a movement saves you from having to be self-critical as well as critical. It skews ones analysis. You can talk about what the better path is without actually being willing to take it (unless that path is one that doesn't take actually engaging the community with a political program- because then we could all just present papers about the best way to defeat imperialism) and therefore without ever knowing whether that path would work better. Kind of like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show, the old men who sit up in the balcony and critique the show. Don't do that. Get on the stage.
Separately, if you are involved in a mass movement and have a critique of it- please don't use language that separates yourself from that movement in the critique. It is not sincere to include yourself when praising a movement (i.e. "Yay! We shut down the port today!") and then separate yourself when critiquing it (i.e. "Those Occupy Oakland folks need to get their shit together. What's wrong with them?"). Some of this may come from the actual process of the GAs themselves. People feel able to be involved, yet people that they strongly disagree with are involved as well. How this is articulated is important in order to not fracture it into groups of 10-20 ineffective groupings made up of folks who all agree with each other.
This is a movement which changes depending on who is and isn't involved on a day-to-day basis. That fluctuates a lot. If you are there, you are the movement. The key to solving some of the valid critiques starts with us all realizing that. At that point we can develop processes to deal with the problems that we have amongst ourselves.
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)