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P.S.  I tried to comment on Hawgblawg about this, but I couldn’t get through the idiotic Blogger anti-spam word verification (guess I just wasn’t reading it right?)

This will probably be the last topical/political post of this blog for a long time.  I have realized that I should accept that this blog needs to be put on the “back burner” or maybe in the storage cabinet, given the other activities I’m engaged in and the pressures on my time.  But, anyway…  I am compelled to write this post because I am disgusted with someone who has impressed me with some of his talk in the past.  While Chris Hedges was never exactly a revolutionary, I have appreciated some of his analyses and opinions, and given his own dislike of some of the less admirable tendencies of mainstream liberals, I never would have expected him to write a nasty and ignorant condemnation and dismissal of the black bloc.  Another reason I wouldn’t have expected this is that he did seem to be praising militant protests in other countries, which included tactics similar to the black blocs’ or which were maybe even beyond most black blocs.  So, why is Chris Hedges now writing ignorant blanket condemnations of the black bloc?  Maybe he’s just gotten a bit too full of himself and his convictions that he knows what is right.  But that’s just a guess, because that sort of thing happens to a lot of people…

Anyway, here’s an interesting article on the matter in Counterpunch.  Counterpunch has some others that are good, too, and maybe I will post them.

By the way, these days I would not call myself an anarchist, and I don’t see myself being very active in a black bloc.  But I do believe in a diversity of tactics as well as in open debate about tactics and approaches (as opposed to merely labeling one’s opponents regarding this issue as a “cancer”).  And I have always appreciated the commitment of people who would put themselves on the line by being in a black bloc.  Solidarity to the black bloc!

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P.S. This Thursday, most Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving. I will pretend to do the same, but I will secretly be celebrating Arundhati Roy’s 50th birthday.

I just love thsi mic check stuff.  It kind of intimidates me about speaking up at meetings since I am already very shy about public speaking…  But, then again, “mic check” can correct a non-projecting, mumbling, or uncharismatic presentation, which could help me… And the “mic check has sundry other, obvious advantages.  It certainly is a brilliant way to show how the collective acting together to create a protest can be stronger than any individual – not only in terms of showing support of a cause through the visibility of a large crowd, but also in terms of literally getting the message heard.

I love how South Carolina used it on Michele Bachmann.  It’s not that it’s so important to target her or that this will change anything major (she doesn’t have much of a candidacy left anyway).  But it sets a great precedent, especially since it proved to be such a success.  I could watch this video of Occupy South Carolina’s “mic check” at her speech over and over again.  I just love this!

And I’d like to find out more about the development of this technique – maybe I will do some research. To me, the “mic check” is the first really new thing that Occupy Wall Street came out with. Everything else is a variation of things I have seen before. The consensus process originally became popular within parts of the feminist movement, then it became very common in the anarchist[ic] set during the “anti-globalization” movement. And in New York City, at least, most of the quirks that it started out with as well as new ones that it’s developed appeared before in Direct Action Network. In fact, I suspect that certain former DAN people in this group were very influential on developing this particular brand of “consensus” and pushing it through. (And now there’s so much talk about “spokes councils” – which gives me terrible deja vu.)

The concept of general assemblies, more generally speaking, is great because it is so old. This all goes back to ancient Greece, if not earlier. So, it should not be new to anyone who’s done a little reading on the matter (though if it is new to some people, let them enjoy that perception of novelty – why not?).

Then, of course, there is the occupation itself… Well, this stuff most recently was inspired by events in Spain and Egypt. But sit-ins and occupations have certainly been a feature of activism before. Personally, I would like to see more of the old-style labor sit-in in which people take over their old place of employment after they have lost their jobs. The classic environmentalist-type sit-in blocking tractors, etc., has always been kind of nice, too. It is great that the Occupy movement has brought this tactic back in such a big way. But once again, it’s not as though I haven’t seen this sort of stuff or heard of it before.

The “mic check” business is another story, though. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I don’t know the history, but this does seem really new. (I know I didn’t see it used in any protests in the “anti-globalization” days, nor have I seen it at so many anti-war protests or conventional labor actions.) And it’s remarkable how quickly and widely it has spread. Plus, it is just a whole lot of fun.

This is a video found at the end of an interesting article that I saw at The New Significance, which had originally appeared in ROAR, The year 2011 marks the end of the end of history.  Before the video, Jerome E. Ross writes:

For 2011, with all its crises and revolutions, marks what Slavoj Žižek, in his speech in Zuccotti Park, called “the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare.”  It marks the return of contentious politics.  And, as such, it marks the End of the End of History.  Not that History ever stopped – we just got confused for a while by the collapse of capitalism’s arch-nemesis, and thought it did.  But the fact that History is still in-the-making is being captured in newspaper headlines, in powerful photographs, and in the words of a simple middle-class lady in Greece during the 48-hour strike of October:  “I have never been a leftist,” she said, “but they’ve pushed us to become extremists.”  When the system forces ordinary people to become revolutionaries, you know you’re no longer at the End of History.  You’re at the very edge of it.

Watch the lady at 5m30s…

Yes, watch her – what a video!