I've updated and revamped my response to Chris Hedges' widely published essay, The Cancer in Occupy, concerning tactics for Occupy Oakland (and by extension Occupy Wall Street).
You can read my full response here: http://www.MitchelCohen.com
In that article, Hedges condemned tactics he attributed to the Black Bloc at the January 28, 2012 "Move-In Day" march where, according to one of many similar reports, Occupy Oakland unsuccessfully attempted to take over the long disused Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center with the intent of converting it into a community center. The peaceful protest of 2,000 was disrupted by police firing tear gas, smoke and pepper bombs into the crowd. It ended with police "kettling" marchers in a public park and in front of a YMCA. But after Hedges appeared last May Day on Democracy Now! and renewed his condemnations without reflecting at all on what folks in Occupy had been saying to him, I decided to publish my rebuttal.
Chris Hedges has and continues to make valuable and often blistering critiques of what he calls "corporate capitalism," and the role of both the Democratic and Republican parties in crushing civil liberties, enacting imperialist wars and ravaging the planet in the service of the 1 percent. He is an inspiring ally (and, strangely, "not a member," in his own words) of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But he has zero experience as part of a radical organization or even an affinity group, and it shows, especially when it comes to how to address differences of opinion and other concerns within a movement.
In fact, Hedges exhibits tremendous disdain for left movements that don't conform to his increasingly moralistic mold. His book, Death of the Liberal Class, "is one of the worst misreadings of history by an acclaimed writer on the Left that I've ever seen," says Brian Tokar, a veteran participant in numerous direct action campaigns and also a professor at the Institute for Social Ecology and of environmental studies at the University of Vermont. "Hedges honestly believes that the New Left accomplished almost nothing, except for some key figures he likes, such as Howard Zinn and the Berrigans."
In Death of the Liberal Class, Hedges (incredibly, to me) condemns the New Left for having "no political vision."
"Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, with its narrator's search for enlightenment, became emblematic of the moral hollowness of the New Left." ....
---------------- To continue reading this piece, which has greatly benefited from feedback from many friends and comrades, please go to http://www.MitchelCohen.com
Thank you. Mitchel
Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen