chaos or victory, you decide
January 31, 2012 at 6:12 pm.Posted by dingalingy
Categories: Open Mic
The willingness of so many sincere and dedicated oakland occupiers to defend the actions on jan 28 demonstrates a lack of experience and a potentially fatal misunderstanding about the political dynamics involved in our struggle. The unwillingness of those participating in and subsequently attempting to justify the chaos indicates a lack of understanding of our enemy and the seriousness of our struggle. This is not a game, it is real war, and unless we fight our war non-violently (198 tactics ) we give our power back to the enemy and loose our public support. There are many people who have been engaged in this struggle for decades, waiting for the moment when the young people would join them on the front lines and enough people stood up for change. Unfortunately, the rapid growth of the Occupy movement made it impossible to explain the basic dynamics of political struggle to all of these new activists. To be quite honest, I am new to the knowlege myself. If you have not availed yourself of the information provided by the Albert Einstein Institute for non-violence or the current tv documentary on gene sharp, please do. The Tunisians did, and the malaysians. If you think our people are less repressed, and deserve less than revolution, please, continue to break things, throw stuff at cops, and take out your uncontrolled emotion on whatever. If you want to win, follow the lead of earlier successful movements. Only discipline and order in the face of violent repression wins the hearts and minds of the 99% we are supposed to lead and represent. What % of the 99% can comprehend explanations of vandalism, justifications for flag burning? If you can’t control yourselves, why would the 99% trust you to make change? Chaos feels good, but it doesn’t work, and i would hate all of our efforts so far vanish into a melee of mindless disorder. What’s done is done, hopefully we can pick up the peices and move forward, it is up to you.
because i have a extensive criminal history that i have had expunged, it would be devastating for me to be arrested at this point in the movement. Alas, i have been stuck behind a screen monitoring and chatting on livestream and calling police departments and mayors and my local media supporting however i can since september 17th. I think oakfosho and jah know dingalingy? My personal credentials are a journalism degree and i shut down the bay bridge in 1990 at the start of the first gulf war. i was a riot girl, i worked with act up and i am happy to say most of my friends lived. I have protested the death penalty, with earth first, and against right wingers, for gay rights, womens rights, bicycle rights, etc. etc … but i totally appreciate your criticism. I was away all weekend, but when i returned i watched all oakfos video. I called my local media to tell them i was shocked and horrified by the police violence against citizens, and i described it — then i watched the oakland city council meeting and it brought back so many memories of cops and jail. I called my media agian, i guess i will be contacting my congresspeople next. God bless all the brave occupiers, god bless us all. my point is —
PEACEFUL PROTESTORS DON’T NEED DEFENDING — all you are doing is endangering people by disrupting the strategy of tactical non violent action. There is not place for a “diversity of tactics” in a successful non-violent political struggle — i wondered, so i went and checked. After the 1st black bloc action in oakland, i went and researched strategy and black bloc is just bad strategy.
The only problem that i have with the flag burning is that that flag will be burned a million billion times all across the country and associated with our allies every where — and i think elements within occupy oakland have turned a deaf ear to their elders and disrespected the source of power, which is the people, why attack authority if it has no power?
I think the civilian oversight board should investigate how the police chased those particular people in front of city hall and left the door open — but weekly f the p marches would have been better off educating people on tactics and strategy than blowing off steam, — THE REASON liberals PEOPLE ARE STAYING HOME IS SOME OF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING.
No one should have left Kaiser, there are many non violent tactics to use in that situation, but everyone must be united. From the non-invitation to peaceful people at the weekly actions it is obvious that “certain elements” (i have been called that more than once and i will again) have chosen to embark upon this totally counterproductive — disorganized, reactive, NOT NONVIOLENT “strategy” which so far has not worked out so well. As my postman said “You know we just lost .. ” and i knew too, but i am still fighting, and i will never stop. Blessing to occupy –may you will find power in unexpected places — like a mayor who is willing to stand up to a homeland security takeover of her city, or a police chief who wants to hire local officers, and a president who just gave a state of the union address that made it sound like he had been attending ga in zucotti. My mom loves occupy, don’t blow it, pull it together, buy some more ribbons and bubble makers (although i was arrested for possession of one once) find
one of us irritating people who have been yelling at you, and listen.
Since you weren’t there, you don’t really know what happened and what did not happen. I fully appreciate that for most Americans, seeing somebody burning the flag is alienating. To me it is somewhat hilarious that those who are our “supporters” like yourself, who weren’t there, are more concerned about a piece of cloth being burned than about our rights being abused by the OPD that night. Fuck, most of Occupy Oakland wasn’t even there, they were at the Y getting kettled. Those of us who were on the plaza just kind of watched with half-interest while a few burned the flag. Those actions did not speak for Occupy Oakland, but at the same time I would never try to prevent or condemn somebody else’s free speech rights (the same reason I don’t advocate using force in the context of counter-protesting).
Basically what I’m saying is, you probably don’t know that much about non-violence, you weren’t there, but you’re trying to lecture us about both of them. Nobody at Occupy Oakland should be condemning their fellow protestors, at a time when the police are planting evidence on our people, brutally beating peaceful protestors, illegally trapping and arresting hundreds of people in an attempt to terrorize us into staying off the streets. The black bloc was defending the peaceful protestors while all the conscientious objecting liberals stayed at home. I’m tired of it. If you wanna be real, get your ass off the couch and into the streets.