Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Just, bloody, ducky.

From Occupy the Ports: How the Occupy movement has flipped the script on left-wing activism. - Slate Magazine
A middle-aged woman, who’d been chanting along with the usual stuff—“Whose ports? Our ports!” and “What’s the direction? Insurrection!” —
started in on a version of the labor movement’s unofficial anthem. It’s supposed to go like this:

Solidarity forever
The union makes us strong

The new version went like this:


Solidarity forever
Occupation makes us strong

Occupiers would like to think that the “us” is the same from song to song. That’s not really clear.
Of course it's not clear: no ground work, no solid alliance, no infrastructure, no plan of action. The reactionary enemy will,
legitimately, ask, how do you know you're "us."

My advice to the Occupy movement, if it wants to avoid being the useful idiots of the 1%, is try thinking.

One of the first rules of political organizing is recognize talk from truth -- your own that is -- not believing your own propaganda.

When protestors were removed from the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, they threatened to come back and be back and protest to "hold the legislators responsible."

When the Tea Party holds legislators responsible, they cost people their seat.

If we accept the Occupy position, anti-corporatist have assumed a strategy that is losing this from the get go.

One has the suspicion, that is a desired out come of the participants.