As resistance movements thrive both on solidarity and on constructive critiques that help them develop and adapt better to the repressive environments in which they operate, the following two analyses posted to san diego indymedia are highlighted here:
Rocky writes: Regarding the plea for help article at the OB Rag website, did you San Diego Freedom Occupiers think it was going to be easy to openly challege wealth and power in this city?... You cannot butt heads with the establishment, who control the cops and the courts, without getting brusied, much less, win a measure of fair treatment. I know several of the more liberal City Councilpersons personally, to whom you suggest we plea for your Constitutional rights of free speech and assembly, but it is election time and like all politicians, they will turn a deaf ear to your message so that corporate campaign donations will continue to flow into their pockets.
While I am intoxicated by your spontaneity and instinct driven movement; I think, soberly, that it may be time to regroup and develop some semblance of strategy. San Diego is not New York, where there are tens of thousands of supporters to watch your back. Progressives, peaceniks and power liberals in San Diego will, for the most part, march, carry signs, write letters but when push comes to shove, when their comfort zones are breached or their security threatened, they will abandon you – or any youth or people of color movement who rock the boat. --Read More--
Anonymous from Puget Sound Anarchists writes: We just got back from the opening march for Occupy Portland, and were even more disappointed by how liberal, reformist, and nonthreatening it was than we had expected. The website for Occupy Portland had promised that "proper actions" would be taken against "instigators" of any "illegal activity (property destruction etc.)," which we can only interpret as a threat to snitch to the cops, so we went with low expectations, but this was by all means a massive disappointment even taking into account our pessimism from the get-go. We attended the opening march for Occupy Portland because we are some angry-ass proles who really hate capitalism...
Although Occupy Wall Street and the offshoot occupations are supposed to be leaderless movements, we found that there were most definitely leaders who managed everything, from the route to the chants to who was allowed to be at the front of the march to who was allowed up on the microphone at the rally at the end of the march. To be clear, this was a hierarchical, authoritarian event. These leaders/organizers, especially the wannabe-cops wearing blue "peacekeeper" armbands, are not our comrades in any way, shape, or form... When we brought out the usual anti-cop chants ("All cops are bastards, ACAB" and "No justice, no peace! Fuck the police!") we were shouted over and told to calm down. One of the peacekeepers called out on the megaphone, "we need volunteers to block the anarchists because they're being negative and this is a positive event!" We were repeatedly told that "cops are the 99% too!", which made us very sad that so few people have any understanding of how class society functions. Cops are class traitors and the enemy. --Read More--
See also: Movement for a Democratic Society's Critique of Occupy DC
One year ago the sacrifice of a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, sparked a rebellion that has circled the globe!
