An account of personal experience with the Occupy movement in San Diego. Apparently, internet culture and activist culture are not entirely compatible.
One of the wisest sayings I've ever heard is, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." When the Occupy Wall Street movement began, I thought it could be something new and edgy, relying on modern technology to make the occupiers effective and adaptable.
For the past three years, I've been involved with Anonymous and Project Chanology, a movement targeting the abuses and criminality of the Scientology organization. With nothing but the internet, we managed to organize global pickets. With no leaders, we rely on the hivemind to sort through suggestions and shake out the good ideas to implement them.
Anonymous; fast, adaptable, ruthless. The ideal model of protest for the new millennium.
You would think Anonymous would have taught some people something new about protests.
And yet, making the trek downtown to the Occupy San Diego encampment, it was like a blast from the past. Same old stale rhetoric and milieu of old hippies, bums and hardcore activists who think they are all that and a bag of chips. Anchored down with soup kitchens and libraries, tents, junk of all sorts, these people couldn't mobilize if they had to.
When I went downtown, the atmosphere wasn't welcoming. People kept trying to put me to work, or blabbering in my face as if I needed some educating.
Listen up. The fact that I came down there suggests I am aware of the issues. I do not need to take tutelage from you. I do not require instruction from you.
Last week, I attended a meeting to organize an 'Occupy Mission Bay' cell, and we hammered out a mission statement that satisfied everyone.
Everyone but the control freaks downtown, that is. And here is where the problems can be seen that are beginning to plague the Occupy movement. As the old school, hardcore activists have slowly taken over, the message is beginning to get muddied as everyone throws their own particular cause against the wall.
Instead of tackling the big issues like corporate personhood, they're bawwing about feeding the homeless and free education and health care. You know, peripheral issues that have always been with us. These are not the issues that captured America's attention.
Here is the Occupy Mission Bay mission statement:
Occupy Mission Bay stands in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and all other satellite Occupations around the world. Its main goal is to work in conjunction, and provide support to Occupy San Diego by extending its reach to a more central location.
OMB believes that occupations do not have to be around the clock, and wishes to increase its chances of success and longevity by working within the confines of city laws and ordinances.
Any individuals wishing to push the limits of civil disobedience in order to make a statement about social and economic injustice will be honored and accepted by OMB, but not protected. Risking arrest is after all an individual’s choice.
OMB wishes to create an atmosphere of orderly, respectful, and peaceful opposition to the status quo, and find a working solution with the city without provoking the authorities. A setting that allows people of all ages, genders, races and social background to feel safe and welcomed, to learn and be involved in this great cause.”
It wasn't long before OSD descended to start picking our mission statement apart.
"Hmmm… To me it seems to reject (or come very close to rejecting) some of the core tenets and features of the movement. The “more central location” part seems upside-down."
All we're offering is satellite support for the movement center downtown. That was totally misinterpreted by the people downtown.
"I think that a Mission statement worded in this way structurally and implicitly undermines #OSD. And it falsely represents us as provoking the authorities rather than the authorities trying to provoke us and committing criminal assaults. It also implies that individuals who have in fact COMPLIED with laws and ordinances have committed disobedience when in fact THEY WERE FALSELY ARRESTED. And the location is exclusionary with respect to disability and social class."
LOL...Somehow, Occupy Mission Bay "undermines OSD." I spoke with many residents of Mission Bay during the Occupy The Bridge event last week, where unions and occupiers joined up to take over the bridge that goes over the I-5 freeway. The SDPD closed the bridge to traffic during our demonstration.
Those horrible, oppressive bastards!
Many of the people I talked with are retired older folks, some of whom went down to the Civic Center occupation and came away with the same sense I got. We're just not as good as people who are camping out. These people are old! They don't WANT to camp out, but they want to participate. Occupy Mission Bay is intended for people like them, the mainstream middle class.
Our location is exclusionary? I don't think so. It has lots of parking, lots of nice grass. Disabled folks have plenty of cement pathways to navigate, and it's a pleasant place to gather and discuss things of importance. But, that's not good enough. In order to live up to OSD standards, wanting to participate is not enough. Offering assistance is not enough.
Responses to my comments resulting from the Occupy Mission Bay mission statement are revealing.
"your sense of social justice is seriously askew, and smacks of defending a lost 'white privilege' rather than struggling for justice for all..."
"...central principle of this mov't from the beginning has been inclusion."
"It is true that in all revolutions, a self-interested middle class has tended to direct the course of events toward their own narrow interest vs. the interest of justice for all at the core of all uprisings. "
You don't achieve inclusion by calling people names or accusing them of being exclusive. The whole point of OMB is to reach out to these disgusting middle class white people who don't wanna camp downtown with them. I find this amusing. And more than a bit hypocritical.
Of course, some of these people downtown have their own obsessions, like the little lady here with her rant about white privilege and the homeless. If I wanted to feed the homeless, there are numerous charities who could use volunteers. But this woman's take on OMB borders on moonbattery.
"Furthermore, the very idea that you're going to go somewhere else and have a "nice" occupation, seems racist and classist to me. I have been living with the very people I feel the OMB folks are trying to escape, and they're lovely, and they're downtrodden, and they're disenfranchised. They are disenfranchised because if they look the wrong way they're considered useless by the upper-middle class white folks and I'm tired of it. "
Isn't that nice...the homeless have another loudmouth advocating for them without asking. I have a friend who lives in a canyon. He's homeless by choice, and works hard every day. I invite him over to hang out at the house. We drink beer and tell tall tales. Sometimes, I videotape his stories, as they're quite entertaining, if a bit blue.So I don't need lectures from screechy bitchy activists about the homeless.
It's cute, she's "living with the very people OMB are trying to escape." Except, Mission Bay is next to Mission Valley, where 1200 homeless people camp out. We share the neighborhood with them. We aren't trying to "escape" the downtown homeless, it's just, we have our own, thank you very much. We don't need to see yours.
And there's that divisive dig at the "upper-middle class white folks" OMB wishes to attract. Is it any wonder the downtown movement is dying? Terms like 'racist' and 'classist' are being used against older folk for whom a trip downtown is a burden. Nice going, guys. Way to reach out to the people we need to grow the movement.
Here's a fine bit of attempted sarcasm from the front.
"Let's make San Diego Occupations little microcosms of American Society, we'll have the wealthy occupy and the poor occupy, the white occupy and the black and the viet etc., we'll have LGBT and hetero, families or singles... to heck with finding the nucleus of the 99%."
This may well be the direction Occupy 2.0 will take. Because the creepy Pinko leftys who have taken over the movement are classist, divisive and obnoxious about accepting "upper-middle class white folks," who will then go on to form cells that are free of all that cruddy tired 60s socialist rhetoric and criticism. This, of course, is not what OSD wants. They want people who will agree with them and not raise questions. They want followers.
"Let's just make little protests that allow us to stay in our little bubbles all over town. I won't be seeing you anymore, I'll be at the poor young white radical woman occupy. "
Poor Cheryl, totally missing the point, or unable to comprehend our mission statement.
"Occupy Mission Bay stands in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and all other satellite Occupations around the world. Its main goal is to work in conjunction, and provide support to Occupy San Diego by extending its reach to a more central location."
"Support" includes showing up for marches and other events. So little Cheryl, presumably, will be stuck in her little "poor young white radical woman" bubble with the rest of the bitches with reading comprehension problems and a bad case of butthurt.
Back to James, whose nuggets of wisdom are ever flowing.
"The rhetoric of dirtiness, safety, and disorder was cited by several OMB supporters in several different posts seeking new supporters as this idea got off the ground."
Rhetoric? The people who have been down there and won't be back have all said it doesn't feel safe, it is dirty and smells of pee and body odor. All upper-middle class white folks are totally drawn to the stench of pee and the unwashed. That's why there are so many of them down there camping out.
But we should also talk about the difficulty of finding parking downtown, and the necessity of walking a long way to get to the Civic Center, and bring up the disabled issue. OSD isn't strong on logistics, evidently. Of course, when you LIVE down there in a tent, transportation isn't a problem for you. No parking, no hiking, plenty of opportunity to feel superior to those for whom these issues are a real problem.
James finds it necessary to lecture us.
"(Please recall that people of color and young people have been getting the shaft for a whole lot longer than middle aged, middle class whites, and that the disparity of wealth between generations is now at an all time high point)"
No way! Really? HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON, JAMES?
"The efforts of some in OMB, yourself included, to poach supporters from OSD after our raids and stated intention to persevere left many people with a very bad taste in their mouth for your occupation site...Why sacrifice what we'd already built to help you all build something new, when your actions were clearly only helping water down our numbers?"
"Poach supporters." How does one poach supporters when we're trying to attract the interest of Mission Bay residents? Apparently James missed the part where we're trying to expand our numbers by reaching out to neighborhoods and accomodating their interest in the movement without having to go downtown to participate? Do you see a bit of egofaggotry crawling in there? They seem concerned that they might be losing their influence. That's life in the big ciudad, guys.
"I'd love to see real solidarity and two way support, but suggest you start by looking in the mirror before criticizing people who have had their boots on the ground for a month and a half."
Call to authority, wow, James. Now you're calling for solidarity, but at the same time suggest that you are somehow better because you've been camping out for six weeks. You wanna wave weenies, well, I've been active against Scientology for three years, so I'm not really that impressed. Do I detect a note of butthurt, James?
"People develop emotional ties to where they have invested their blood, sweat, and tears; and people in social mov'ts tend to resent a johnny-come-lately trying to steal some of their thunder as violating a basic principle of solidarity in not standing with an established group instead of organizing one's own."
Horrors! A "johnny come lately!" And in the same paragraph as a lecture on solidarity! I swear, these people are the Fox News of the Occupy movement, the way they twist things and interpret them wrong. I guess the 'johnny come latelys" don't like the way you're doing things. I know I don't.
It appears that the humorless comrades who are always simmering in rebellion have grabbed the helm of the Occupy movement here. They've turned the direction of the Occupy movement back in to that old, moldy "justice for the people" crap that gets nobody nowhere. What happened to withdrawing personhood from corporations? What happened to fighting to reform banks? What happened to the movement to reject "money equals free speech?"
These were the issues that attracted my attention in the first place.
Everyone knows that it's easy to criticize something. Not everyone takes the next step and offers solutions. I have a few.
1. Communication. Although Occupy San Diego has a perfectly good forum site at Occupysd.us, they apparently have gotten into some spiff with the creator. So they've chosen to use a saw to hammer a nail, preferring Facebook, clunky at best and not suited to the jerb.
Anonymous could not have accomplished much without our fora. When we lost enturb.net, we sort of took over some hippie site until whyweprotest.net was live. We also use Internet Relay Chat and keep Usenet in case our other sites go down. Our Usenet site is alt.religion.scientology. At one time, it was the main communication tool of Scientology critics before Anonymous came out of their basements in 2008. The point is, Anonymous uses several tools to communicate globally. OSD uses Facebook.
2. Humorless earnestness and insistence that everyone embrace your message 100% across the board. It's I/O thinking, black and white, little room for diversity. Ironic, I know. They baww about diversity while dissing everyone who doesn't think exactly like they do.
The socialist message creeping in is definitely driving mainstream America away. We came for the depersonating of corporations, not a bunch of leftwing rhetoric about free education and how terribly white people have treated our chocolate and mole-skinned brothers and sisters. Yeah, way to attract the middle class, you mutts. Fail upon fail. Watch your movement die as the strident core gets more demanding as they try to hang on to their positions within the Occupation. Pump up the fun!
They're holding a pajama party downtown in December. I'm really not sure that qualifies as "fun," particularly in light of the fact that it's still civil disobedience to camp out, don't know what SDPD and the city has planned, don't REALLY want to go to jail in jammies. So is it really a party, or just a way to lure folks downtown to spend the night? But, at least it shows an attempt at making it fun. That's a start.
They need to step back and quit being so inclusive. They're not welcoming the people of Mission Bay, they're calling them privileged white people and criticising them for not coming downtown with their walkers and creaky old bones.
If you're going to talk about inclusion, you'd best start walking the walk, OSD. Right now I see your people accusing OMB of doing the exact thing you're doing. You are turning away the middle class that is not only part of the 99%, they are vital to its success.
I am beginning to think the Occupation has done all it can. It has raised consciousness, not only among the public, but the politicians and the media as well. But now, they're starting to annoy the general public. It may be time to exit on a win, fold the tents and plan for spring.
Back to the lessons of history. We didn't win the Revolutionary War by dressing in red and lining up like a row of carnival ducks. We invented guerrilla warfare. Groups like the Green Mountain Boys in New Hampshire, and Francis Marion in the Carolinas plagued and tormented the British by being fast, mobile, and camouflaged. We won a war by thinking outside of the box.
More recently, one woman launched something that had incredible success. All on her own, Kristen Christian started the Move Your Money Day movement, and money was moved. Over half a million people yanked their money out of big banks and transferred it to credit unions and local banks. The big banks were not pleased. The Occupation supported MYM Day, but they didn't originate it.
We need more projects like this; things that are fairly easy for people to accomplish and things that produce big results. We are not going to identify these things by arguing about White Flight from the homeless, or swaggering around all self important cuz WOW! YOU'VE BEEN CAMPING OUT FOR SIX WEEKS!
Anonymous is a lot like the American revolutionaries, and has had great success in the past three years as Project Chanology continues to seriously impact Scientology's ability to make a living with fearmongering, fraud and intimidation. We aren't nailed down to one place, and don't find it necessary to drag around a library and a soup kitchen. Who needs books when you got URLs? At the end of the day, we disperse back to the Land of Wind and Ghosts, aka the internet, where we discuss the results of the day; not only with posts, but also pictures and video embedded in posts so one doesn't have to click through a bunch of sites to view them.
The Occupy movement is not taking as much advantage of online communication as they could. I believe that Occupy 1.0 is fading fast. This doesn't mean it's over, not by a long shot. It's just that camp-outs and soup kitchens and teach-ins can only get you so far with mainstream America.
It's time now to buckle down and start repealing corporate personhood, work to change the "money equals free speech" decision, enforce bank and political reform.
It seems the hardest goal is to get the genuine attention of lawmakers and politicals. We talk reform, they divert to "jobs bill." Is there any point in trumping up a bunch of make-work for the unemployed while the 1% is still ripping us off?
Priorities are apparently the hardest thing for the Occupation to deal with. Too many leaderfags have their own agendas, which dilutes everything. We need to focus on important issues now. We desperately need reform in several areas of government. So excuse me if I tend to fire back when the comrades get all uppity and judgmental. Somebody has to point out the hypocrisy of calling for unity and acceptance while calling other citizens names based on class, economic status and race.
I have spoken with others who see the same thing happening at their Occupations; somehow the leftys manage to grab control and hijack the movement for their own causes. Then they get mad because the people who thought the target was government corruption wander away when demands for free education and other socialist garbage starts tainting the movement overall.
Perhaps next year, Occupy 2.0 will be an improvement? Time will tell. Maybe the movement will morph into cells of like-minded people working on specific targets. At least if we all agree amongst ourselves, less time and effort will be wasted on arguing with the OWS chain of command.
And, since the big news last week was that Occupy San Diego found all points of the Occupy Mission Bay mission statement "acceptable," apparently there is a chain of command. But I do not accept their authority over anything I care to initiate to further the interests of the 99%.