No more secrets. It is my opinion that this movement by it’s very nature precludes secrecy. To introduce secrecy to this movement will open a gigantic door for subversion. We have nothing to hide not to mention it is also my opinion that it is quite foolish to think we have any prayer of hiding anything from those that would seek to undermine this movement. Among the many things we have been ingrained with by society is a profound sense of paranoia, that everyone and everything is out to get me, mostly because in one way or another everything has been out to get us. Not anymore. We attach ourselves to this movement despite it’s chaotic nature because for once in our lives it looks like there is something that is NOT out to get us. Lets keep it that way. I implore everyone to be as open as possible about our plans, about our tactics, about our decisions. After all, the 99% is just campaign slogan. The reality of the our situation is we need 100%. Secrecy will only divide this movement. Trust everyone, but more importantly trust the strength of this movement to carry us through whatever complications the open nature of our movement may bring down the road. Anyway it seems the more the 1% try to stop us the bigger we get anyway so I say, tell them everything we’re doing, let them plan against us. The repression only proves our point.
Be impeccable with your word
Don’t take anything personally
Don’t make assumptions
Always do your best.
I apologize; I came up with a long post that I stand by all the way, but at the same time it shows lack of understanding of the dissenting opinion. I think I do understand the idea that we are hurting ourselves in the public perception by criticizing ourselves, appearing to be divided in our goals/aims, etc. But if you appear to be this monolithic presence with no diversity of opinion, you will turn off the rest of the 99%.
I can be specific, if the original poster doesn’t mind… there was a proposal recently that was related to the ‘Principles of St. Paul”, and it was composed of 4 rules basically, one of which was a rule that forbade anybody from speaking negatively about Occupy Oakland to the corporate media. It was a huge problem, because how do we define what is corporate media? Is Facebook the corporate media? There’s a reason the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were called the Facebook revolutions by some people. Secrecy equals silence. I’m with you 100%, I love your post and I think that we should all embrace true “transparency” (Obama is a fucking joke as far as that campaign promise goes) , and I personally have never tried to be anonymous. I post here under my real name. That forces me to at least be a reasonable person. We are in an emergency.
There is a police state that is trying to push the whole country off the cliff. If Americans can’t stand up and openly denounce it, then we are lost already. The only reason I didn’t run off to fucking Canada when George Bush was re-elected was because I didn’t want to give up my power as an American citizen to do something about the abuses of this empire.
I thought about how, if I was a citizen of Afghanistan or of any other country that has been the victim of American abuse, I would give so much just to have a voice in that power that was above me. So I have stayed, and waited for this moment. So far it has been messy, but you have not let me down. I have been inspired by the overall movement from my fellow Oaklandish people and from everybody else I’ve come across. I want to share that with everyone, not be silent and secretive about it. Like I said, that is our power, that is the reason we are inspiring people all over the world, because the U.S. is the capital of racist neocolonialism and neoliberalism and we are using our power to take a stand against it.
I agree, long has our society been overrun with secrets that withhold truth from so many, why carry on this tradition? Let’s be clear with our intent so we don’t end up creating factions, let’s put our ideas in the light. Thank you Aaron.
Can you be more specific, site examples of secrecy and how they can be or should be brought to light? Everything I have experienced in OO has been out in the open (literally). There are no closed doors at Oscar Grant Plaza!