once again Occupy takes the stage and I have mixed feelings about the media literate enthusiastic amatuers with the franchise activism
TIP 1: dont giggle from a disaster zone. Occupy Sandy does wonderful work, and no doubt its inspiring, but for fucks sake, have some sense of gravitas. Journalists should not be exuding glib joy when reporting on death and destruction.
TIP 2: Occupy is a nice brand, it gets attention online and in media. Its a nice #Occupy hash tag. But please dont confuse the search engine marketing & optimization with real achievements. There are many organizations and networks with no-brands, no-logos that's branding is not global and does not extend beyond there footprint of activism.
TIP 3: Defer to existing and long-running projects. Occupy should stop taking the stage and preaching its generation y post-industrial irony. Whenever it gets attention it should act as a clearinghouse, a referall network for existing and long-running networks. Organizations that have institutional capacity to take the slack when the enthusiastic volunteers go home to watch Netflix or Facesuck.
TIP 4: Disaster Occupy's should not become an opportunity to be exploited, should not become the anti-capitalist space for disaster capitalism.
TIP 5: A disaster is not a place to test anti-state theories. In a major disaster the state is needed more than ever. Its one thing to bear witness to misallocation of resources, oppression etc, its another to make a disaster scene a site for a demo.
Anyone seen Children of Men? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzWTIexszQ
the military and police need to be drawn out of their roles of oppressor and learn new forms of guardian and sustainment. This is what Howard Zinn calls the Revolt of the Guards, and as the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-En-N-yQjQ
-- -- Nicholas Roberts US 510-684-8264 http://Permaculture.TV