*Raw Footage* Elders Arrested By NYPD in Harlem Jan. 5, 2012

S&F is a crime against humanity, God says. Every single Brownsville cop is going to hell, I deduce?
Do Black and Brown children of this city deserve no more than criminalization and ridicule? How many unarmed kids did the NYPD kill this week?
Oink Bloomberg, oink Kelly. If you murder an unarmed youth in the bathroom of his home in front of his grandmother and his little sister, because he had five bucks worth of pot on him, you should expect anger. You should expect to be called a pig and run out of town. You’re a pig, get out, may God smite you down, Amen. The NYPD’s problem is that it’s being run like a corporation. Corporations are not good at keeping youth safe.
Kelly is a warmonger and a businessman. Our complacency is a testament to the totality of his police state: indeed our complacency is the goal of the open-air prisons he’s made of marginalized neighborhoods.
We want our streets back. We should be moving into an era in which the cops do less. Instead, they are doing more and more. Collectively and peacefully we gotta stand up. We all have cameras – there’s no logical reason we can’t cop-watch this cop problem away. Cameras on.
Film the NYPD saying, “I’m just doing my job.” We’re creating an online museum of the New Jim Crow. We will shame these thugs in perpetuity. Their grandchildren will know what they did for a living. Their great-grandchildren will know.
NYPD is profiting from the pain and suffering of People of Color. The crime rate, we are to believe, is down. Oink oink bang bang, every day the same old thang: UF-250, UF-250, UF-250, repeat…
A school bus goes by this scene of degradation at the end of the video. I’m just saying the kids inside are probably forming their ideas about the police. If the youth have anger, it may be rational – just saying we may have to address it as legitimate, their hurt. We may have to validate their testimonies.
Telling them to pull up their pants is a joke.
Our youth wear hoodies cause it’s cold out.
Go arrest a banker.

In the article, Haider makes a point that seems to reflect the situation with Occupy in many locales:

…insurrectionary anarchists and reformists like MoveOn vie for hegemony over the movement, each advancing street-fighting and voting not as tactics, but as the ultimate goals. And we have to be clear that it is an alliance between social democrats and ultra-leftists that has driven this movement, in spite of their public scorn for each other.

Their alliance, however, has opened a space for revolutionary responses to the crisis. These responses won’t be summed up in spectacular clash. They’ll be a process that will be with us through the ebbs and flows, beyond every defeat and within every victory.

As communists participating in the Occupy movement, we have a strategic responsibility to chart out a political path that can bridge the seemingly insurmountable chasm that has bubbled up between our friends in the black blocs and folks like Carl Davidson. How do we avoid fetishizing the process, the tactic, the movement, and mobilize all factors towards our final goal? How do we act as a revolutionary and explicitly communist pole within this whole process — while steeping ourselves in the new current of radicalism that has emerged?

I don’t have the answers to those questions yet, but we need to be thinking in those strategic terms and taking on that responsibility. Keith remarked in comment 11 about preparing people for the seizure of power. These kinds of battles are, as Lenin said about strikes a century ago, truly schools of war for the masses. Facing significantly less repression than what we saw in Oakland, I have seen liberal democrats transform into revolutionaries in the span of a few hours. I’m not sure however that the “Fuck the Police” marches have been totally bad — where people have raised that slogan explicitly in recent months I have not seen alienation from the basic proletarian masses, but on the contrary, widespread elation and support for that bedrock revolutionary sentiment. Maybe it’s alienating for other class forces, which is another question — who are we oriented towards, as reds?

I’ve been at very Occupy sites, including one rather tense confrontation a Zuccotti Park. Tomorrow I speak at an event put on by Occupy Pittsburgh.

And I’ve said I have no direct knowledge of Oakland, other than reading the same stuff everyone else does.

But friends in Oakland make several points. One born out in practice is the OWS didn’t have the forces to take the Kaiser center–public property well-guarded by the police. The proof is in the results. The second is that several community forces have staked a prior claim to it, even if ‘empty’ at the moment–how this is to be taken into acount is for you to work out. Third is that may forces earlier supportive of OWS were getting fed up with the ‘Black Bloc’ silliness, which was turning the wider public against the whole thing.

From your comments, it seems these points have some support among progressive and radical forces in the city. How important that is remain for you and your comrades to decide, as well as what , if anything, you want to do about it.

OWS in Pittsburgh gets evicted Monday, or at least that’s the threat. We’re see how the GA and its allies want to respond. So I’ll engage in the ones I can take part in, to the extent that it makes sense. Our group, CCDS, just sent a team of two to visit a good number of places across the South, and will be working with one in New Orleans, and also do another round in the South and Soutwest. There are debates everywhere of all sorts–but those in Oakland seen a little more stressed.

Yes, I watched the video, and no, I have no hatred of militancy at all. Just the opposite–but I like there to be some larger point to it. Did they really think they were going to seize this convention center? If so, they were highly unrealistic–as opposed to the effort to shut down the port for a few hours, which made more sense.

Thing is, it’s not just Carl, but he does represent some others with very similar or the same outlook. All along the way, in the OWS movement, including Occupy Oakland, tactics have been highly controversial. (At this moment, can’t think of any movement where tactics, or even strategy, hasn’t been controversial.)

But let’s backtrack a sec—how realistic was seizing the vacated Kaiser convention center?.

For weeks before January 28th, people of different political stripes have been mobilizing and building for that day—a day to Move In and Occupy. The location was NOT disclosed—and for good reason–, even to many of us who have been very active in Occupy. Some of us took the weeks’ ahead of time to go into our communities, and to not only inform people about what was next on the more immediate agenda, but to encourage participation as well as to listen to what people had to say.

Overwhelmingly there was/is support and agreement with the Occupy movement, and overall, the reaction was extremely positive. It is no accident that overall this movement has spoken to the needs and viewpoint of millions, and that is IMO a big part of why the rulers and their spokespeople are so set on smashing it, and dividing the people, for now, mainly along tactical lines.

Repeatedly what a lot of us heard (from Oakland occupants/residents) during the weeks ahead of time, was “Hey, they tore down the tents in Oscar Grant Plaza, but there are plenty of places left that we need to occupy. Go for it.” That was not a big point of controversy (or thought to be “unrealistic” as Carl said.) The controversy was more over tactics against the cops. But even then, you didn’t have to convince the majority of Oakland residents that the real violence was/is initiated by and came from the po-lice—and that the po-lice were the bourgeoisie’s henchmen. For most in Oakland, that’s a no brainer.

On January 29th a poll was put on the local news—57% of those polled were still staunch supporters of Occupy even if some disagreed with some of the tactics, 30% were wavering, and 10% were no longer Occupy supporters.

And occupying and claiming another location must have resonated with someone, since initially over 2,000 people showed up to participate in some form or another and with boots on the ground, support the “takeover”.

I agree that TNL (in Comment 9) hit on some very important points, not the least of which–

The challenge here is to figure out how to be good at both, how to creatively combine the development of the fighting capacity of what will remain for some time a minority within the movement with the maintenance of mass sympathy and participation by a majority that isn’t yet ready to fight the police.

IMO, the Carl’s of the world ultimately view any of this as “unrealistic.” Which makes me wonder how they view the “realistic” possibilities for making revolution, building socialism, etc., or even a revolutionary process? To me, for Carl to say that he supports Occupy (even from afar) is pretty disingenuous. Frankly a number of people, including myself, are critical of some of the tactics used thus far, but at least we’re willing to jump into the fray, continue to struggle with those who are in reality allies, and together (along with that 57% mentioned) figure out the way forward.

And BTW…besides just concentrating on the video – might be a good idea to go back and read “Police Assault on Occupy Oakland: A First Hand Account” which I thought an excellent account for either anyone not immediately involved or those who were there.

My wondering as I read your piece is how does the Big Lie take root? What allows many to completely overlook contradictory facts (science as you noted) and embrace the disinformation wholeheartedly? I don’t see it as mainly a question of ignorance (i.e., if they had the facts then perspectives/actions would shift; that happens for a relatively few).

Like the affect of opiates, there needs to be receptors somewhere. What are those receptors and how does a revolutionary outlook disrupt those recpetor sites with a cognitive dissonance that opens the possibility for leaps in consciousness?

It seems that the safety of nationalism (read: ideological community), even in so-called free-wheeling America, is a key component strengthenng these receptors. Post-9/11, this safety-in-nationalism has qualitatively been amplified, among both liberals (resurrecting the Founding Fathers’ democratic template about America’s creation myth), and among the conservatives (applying the god-bestowed right to Empire that is America’s birthright). We cannot underestimate, or be glib about, the impact of 9/11 on the collective consciousness (and unconscious) of the mainstream throughout America. The demogoguery expressed by both Dems and Reps about restoring America’s greatness has more staying power (and mobilizing power) than our sometimes jaded lefty assessments would consider. This is a vital part of the ideological terrain we are navigating as 2012 opens, as is OWS, the economy, and preparations for more war.

Disinformation and Big Lies find root not in the empty space of ignorance, but in the fertile soil of peoples’ desire for explainations of reality that provide a narrative of safety and reassurance that everything is really flowing from America’s noble ideals — how better to explain the embrace of America’s wars, terror, and exploitation across the globe than to see them (even if imperfect) as protecting an America that so many believe is the pinnacle of human social evolution?

Internationalism and mano-a-mano ideological struggle urges itself upon us.

DGR may be a loony fringe, but what they advocate has more in common with terrorism than with mass politics. It strikes me that considerable effort is required to miss the contempt felt for human sensibility and aspiration in general, let alone working class aspirations in particular, in the DGR quotes that Ian pointedly supplies.

I am puzzled, Stephanie, why you think the ideas, the ‘project’ if you like, of DGR is admirable or progressive when their program seems like a secular version of the Taliban.

!, Limit their powers.
2. have higher standards of professionalism for everyone.
3. Promote a culture of critical review that starts at the top.
4, Reject all ‘genius’ theories ahead of time.
5, Make central bodies subordinate to regular Conventions or Congresses, allowing nominations of individuals and slates from the floor if they can get a minimum of signatures.
6. Make everyone stand for election, using secret preferential balloting, at these gatherings, held every two or three years.

There are probably more, and all bets are off under fascist conditions, but these will do for starters. But in the end, there are no iron-clad guarantees. You may have to simply rise up and rebel.