Lots to get out after today, funny thing is I didn’t even take advantage of my day off as much as I probably should have. Work was slow today, so they told me I didn’t have to come in. This is a problem, but I tried to make the most of it and not stress.
I heard early this morning about the occupation at New School University. I have some mixed feelings. Of course, I think that the level of aggression the police used was brutal and going far and beyond the limits any “law and order” type officer would or should use. That being said, I think that this last occupation at NSU and the one most recently at NYU present real opportunities for radical/progressive students to evaluate our approach to strategy and tactics, and take a critical approach to an organizing logic I’ve seen brought up several times now.
Many in the radical student movement at NSU and NYU talk about building occupations as “ends to themselves,” that it’s a mistake to treat this tactic as a “means to an ends.” I think the consequences of the most recent occupations at NSU and NYU should push many of us to take a more critical stance to that arguement, and to think much more objectively about the standards we use to evaluate our successes and failures.
Here’s a pattern I’ve been noticing: 10 – 15 students occupy a building. Shout some slogans like, “Student Power!” “Occupy!” or some other such thing. They wave some flags, drop some banners, and write any variety of communiques, manifestos or blog posts. They make some passionate and dramatic YouTube videos documenting the whole scenario, until, inevitably some cops come and ruin all the fun. They make arrests and then a ton of students cry “shame” (literally). Few if any students wind up joining the movement, or becoming active participants in long-haul struggles for change, coalitions are rarely built, things remain pretty much the same (except, perhaps, for those who directly participated).
Furthermore, few students actually take this as a real chance to self-examine the state of the movement, the strategies we use and the tactics we employ. Instead, we lambaste the cops for doing what we know they’ll do every time. I mean, at a certain point is exhausting to get angry for something rather predictable. Rather than do what everybody expects us to do–yell at the cops, protest even more, with little success–let’s reflect.
If our standard for success in these cases is “did we occupy a building?” Than the occupiers won (by their analysis). However, I think most of us are working for much much more than that (and I suspect wouldn’t find the sacrifices made to meet such standards terribly efficient). If you’re concerned, like I am, with more broad, fundamental change, than I think we need different standards for success.
Our power to win change comes from people, and getting lots and lots of people to pressure decision-makers in a number of dynamic, creative and ever more militant ways (two of my favorite essays describing this in more detail can be found here and here.)
If that’s accurate, than it follows our tactics should 1) expand our base of support, 2) move supporters more into the leadership of our movement; increase their confidence and level of commitment, and 4) broadly raise constituents consciousness, and advance a radical narrative around key issues. I shouldn’t treat each of those standards as a priori but this isn’t an academic approach–it’s an effing blog post. The point I’m making here is that we need to use tactics that bring more cohesion to our movement in the form of recruiting “neutral” folks, and at the same time strengthen the leadership, unity and commitment of people on our side.
So, if it’s the case that what some critics are claiming (and I happen to agree) is true, and that these most recent occupations at NYU and NSU alienate more people than they recruit, that the costs are higher than the gains, than we should take those criticisms seriously and not just blow them off as “liberal”or whatever. In the words of Stokely Charmichael, (who popularized the term “Black Power” and founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) if we are revolutionaries than we have “a responsibility to succeed in making revolution.” Part of that is being open minded and self-critical, and not clinging dogmatically to any one strategy or tactic. We all have a responsibility to growing our movement together, and learning from our victories and our failures.
All that being said, I should clarify. I’m not saying all that to suggest anything that questions the commitment of anybody involved in those specific events. I’m merely suggesting that we use the heat of the moment to evaluate our strategy and tactics.
After about a week and half of straight stressing out over school, money, impending doom, sex, the existence/non-existence of G-d, snow, lack of snow, the stock market, that weird feeling Cap’n Crunch gives you at the roof of your mouth after you eat a bowl, work, lack of work/too much, US foreign policy, seasonal beers, where my clothes are made from, not having any coffee, etc. (I truthfully do stress about all of this), I really needed to let go.
He really looks like this on stage and it's everybit as amazing as it looks.
Jason Webleyt played at the Trumbullplex tonight, a local “anarchist collective” I live about three blocks away from now. I’ve been to innumerable punk shows there, but haven’t gone in a while (no real reason why, I just haven’t) and there couldn’t have been a better show to return for. Jason’s lyrics and music are amazing. His ability to get the whole room together and have a good time is astounding, only matched by the fact that he managed to keep his hat on his head up until the last song of the show (but I think that’s all part of the fun).
Anyway, I found out about Jason from following Amanda-Fucking-Palmer on Twitter. So you should too, and then discover other amazing music that you can then share with me.
Also, if you think that I have a crush on him, you’re probably (definitely) right.
That’s all for now.
I finally finished my Human Rights paper I’ve been stressing about finishing for the past week. If people want, I’d be more than happy to put a PDF online for people to read (not to act like, “Oh I’m so smart, don’t you want to read my paper?” but because, as I’ll explain below it might shed some light on recent current events).
Following a bizzare dream I had Wednesday night where a giant spider tried marrying a friend of mine, I woke up to see this at the top of my Google News feed,
I wasn’t sure what had happened while I was sleeping, but I was sure it had something to do with a wild-eyed professor and some scrappy kid in a Delorian screwing up the space-time continuum. News about pirates and spies in one day? Russian spies no less.
I’m not done with the 80’s references just yet. I later went to my Human Rights course when the seige of Manny Noriega’s palace came up for discussion. For those who aren’t familiar, when the US seiged the palace of the military dictator, the army fameously employed “psyops” (psychological operations) to force him out. The tactic used involved aiming giant speakers at the palace and blaring loud rock music. Missing the point of the discussion, I asked “What music did they play?” Nobody knew, so I Googled it:
The first song played was G ‘n’ R: “Welcome to the Jungle.” Other selections included U2, Sonic Youth and the B52s. When somebody responded “well that doesn’t sound so bad.” I mentioned everybody has a “Rock Lobster Threshold” (the RLT index is a normative basis for the ability to withstand nasaly vox.)
About 4 hours ago I finished my paper evaluating democracy in Venezuela. When I woke up this morning to do some extra research and continue from where I left off in my writing the night before, I found an article from The Economist called “Venezuela’s endangered democracy.” How relevant!
The Economist article runs over a laundry list of corruption claims regarding Venezuela’s treatment of the opposition movement, without a mention of the behavior of the opposition. The opposition launched a violent military coup in April 2002, locked workers out of the all important Venezuelan oil-industry that devastated the economy and caused extreme poverty and unemployment to skyrocket and among other things, established a Middle Age style battle plan to protect upper-crust gated communities in case the “delinquent” poor decide to storm their neighborhood someday (amid classist rumors that such plans were in forming). The plans called for the gathering of arms and (I kid you not) preparing hot oil and water to pour on top of any pissed off poor people who come to your windows for looting. They also suggested that residents keep a close watch on their domestic servents because they might be after you.
One might ask how the US government may respond if it were found out that a Mayor of a major metropolitan city was an outspoken member of movement that had recently overthrown the government and advocates civil violence? Our government barely even stands to keep congressmen that like to have sex with dudes (of course some ludicrous elements in our society may think those are comparable). And yet, in the face of the violent behavior of the opposition, the opposition is still allowed to march, demonstrate, compete in elections and even blockade major intersections (with much more lenient police treatment than similar protesters receive here).
The thesis of the paper I was writing at the time basically argues that the standards people like politicians, media pundits and most mainstream political academics use to evaluate democracy are narrow, limited and exclude considerations of “substantive democracy.” Substantive democracy meaning social equality, human development, things relating to the real moral foundation of democratic thought (Rousseau argued in “The Social Contract” that for democracy it is essential that “no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sel himself,” and further that laws “are always of use to those who ossess and harmful to those who have nothing: from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all have something and none too much.”
The standards most of these mainstream folks use are narrowly concerned with how close a government comes to meeting what we in the west refer to as “liberal democracy”. In other words, using a standard that will exclude everything that doesn’t basically look like a traditional Western democracy from being “democratic.” Presumably, the reason liberal democracy is dogmatically latched onto as the standard, is because these folks feel there shouldn’t be one. Hence when a country emerges like Venezuela, that advocates a “participatory democracy” that aims for substantively democratic progress, the pundits go crazy over every banal cry of government corruption or abuse of power that would otherwise be considered benign in a country like Mexico (or Canada).
So, according to the writers at the Economist, it follows that checking the authority of a Mayor who sympathizes with military coup-makers devalues the entire basis of Venezuelan democracy. Not surprisingly there’s no mention of the real growth in substantive democracy in the country. The author Gregory Wilpert who wrote a phenomenal book on the Chávez government called “Changing Venezuela by Taking Power” sent me a Powerpoint that outlines many of these impressive developments.
Extreme poverty’s plummeted from 20% to 9% in just ten years since Chávez was elected, literacy and life expectancy is on the rise, the GDP has matched traditional growth rates and (here’s a big one) university enrollment has increased from 660,000 in 1998 to over 2.1 million in 2008 (and I’m sure they’re students don’t need to be put into 35 years of debt to attend!)
So here’s what I’m asking the reader that made it this far into my post: Go beneath the headlines. I’ll never expect the media to get it right on a matter this complex.
I’ll even help. Good resources on Venezuela:
- “Venezuela: Not What You Think” by Robin Hahnel
- Venezuela Analysis
- NACLA Report on the Americas
- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (video)
As the summer months crawl closer, all too slowly, I feel a familiar hunger coming on. Last summer, I had a debilitating addiction that harmed my ability to pay bills, feed myself and meet my other essential needs. It was only broken through a long, hard process to ween myself. But I feel it coming on again.
Last summer I bought like 50 books on Amazon Marketplace, and I just bought The Selfish Gene, two Hunter S Thompson Books, Hard Times by Studs Terkel and … I think I might’ve bought The Stranger in a drunken haze, too, but I’m not sure.
Anyway, I’ll probably write my thoughts about these books when, or if, I ever read them.
About two or three weeks ago my roommates and I threw a party for our housewarming, and was also a fundraiser for the Student Environmental Action Coalition. We had a couple bands play, including James & the Rainbros who just recently came out with a music video that has footage from our party in it. Check it out:
James and The Rainbros – “Our Own Thing” from Tom Valko on Vimeo.
