This is exactly the sort of thing that will bring ultimate success. Basically, Occupy can morph faster than the opposition can keep up. If anybody thinks that simple camp-outs will be the strategy again this year, they will b left in the dust. And of course, that's exactly what the Authorities are gearing up for. They're gonna be all prepared and armed to fight the last war. Just like always.

Occupy will come in a whole new form this spring...

Last edited Thu Mar 1, 2012, 05:08 PM - Edit history (4)

Because we need creative solutions...
The one failing I see in the Occupy movement that makes it unlike the civil rights movement is the unwillingness to go to jail...and I can understand that
But what made non violent protest work in the civil rights movement and with Gandhi is the willingness to go to jail...
When the first two buses of the freedom riders left for Mississippi one of them was surrounded by the Klan and burned and the occupants assaulted...when the cops arrived they told the Klan..."OK you boys have had your fun, now go home"
The second buss made it to the buss terminal and there were cops there to protect the white waiting room and every one of them were arrested and put in Jail.
But that touched off a wave all over the country of young people...black and white who wanted to become freedom riders and were all willing to go to jail and Mississippi was overwhelmed and defeated at least in the bus station.
The sit ins at the lunch counter went the same way....when the ones sitting were arrested there was a line of people waiting to take their place.....it was a badge of honer among the young to be arrested for civil disobedience.

I hope creative solutions can be had that will work without putting your body on the line.

According to the counter at http://occupyarrests.moonfruit.com/ as of two days ago there had been 6607 arrests of occupiers in 111 different cities in the US.

Just this past week, there were 34 on Wednesday, 10 on Monday, and 6 on Saturday.

When they did a sit in all the protesters would sit in and all would get arrested....which loaded up the jails and cost the locals a lot of money...
There was a scene out of the movie about Gandhi where they were demanding entrance to the salt mines that the British had guards posted on...when the first one stepped up an tried to enter the guard hit him with the but of a gun...he fell and the next one stepped forward and he too was hit and carried away....soon there was a long line of people standing waiting for their abuse...and the guards would just touch them on the cheek and go to the next one....and it became a futile exercise because when you meet non violence with violence you loose the support of decent people...same thing happened with the civil rights movement...when the burning buss was shown on TV to the American people the South cause was lost.

Remember the sit down where those kids were pepper sprayed? Had there been a line of hundreds to take their place when they were dragged off it would have been a whole different thing....there is power in unity of purpose and action.
But I do understand that this movement is not the same as the civil rights movement where a whole class of people were really brutalized in a systematic fashion

The Wobblies were very into flooding to the locations of actions from all over the country and filling up the jails to the point where they went into gridlock -- and the anarchist wing of Occupy in particular is well aware of Wobbly tactics. I think we'll yet see something like what you describe.

They had extensive literature on what to do when arrested, before the first protest in NYC. They had already lined up The Lawyers Guild, and every protester has been given their number so they can call for legal assistance if they are arrested.

At GAs eg, before staging protests, the issue of arrests was always raised and those willing to be arrested made themselves known as they were asked to do. There was never any shortage of people willing to do so.

You can eg, see the results of the training they engage in regarding what to do when arrested, in most of the video after the cops show up and begin arresting people. The protesters have been instructed to get the names of those arrested and to ask the cops where they are being taken. The badge numbers of cops are recorded by other protesters. In many of the videos you can see the protesters making use of that training.

In fact there was intense discussion, not about how NOT to get arrested, but about how to act and what to do, once it happened. From the beginning they expected arrests and were very prepared for them. I doubt though, that they expected the brutality that occurred especially in Oakland with the near killing of two Iraq War Veterans or the brutality directed at those who were arrested in the jails or the police vans. Not that it was a surprise, and now of course they do expect it.

But my point is that if you have a sit in or something like it to block some entrance and the cops make some arrest and and take them to jail they win because they were able to do their job and the protesters were not.
But if when the first batch are arrested and more take there place and continue to take their place the cops cannot do their job and do not win...but the protesters do.
That is how civil disobedience worked during the civil rights time and how it worked with Gandhi.
But I am just an old fart and probably living in the past...but I was trying to be helpful because I am unable to put my body on the line.

of those arrested. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

I remember while watching the Egyptian protests that they used that technique and thought it was very effective.

I have not seen that suggested at any of the Occupy GAs which doesn't mean it has not been. But it should be, imo.

You were very helpful. I think that is a great tactic and I wonder why they have used it.

Again, I'm very sorry if I misunderstood

I do sometimes come off as preachy.

Thanks for that...going to look and see I if I can fine more about that...I like that kind of history....the kind you don't see in history books.

Big supporter of Occupy movement here in my city, but I've noticed the trend since the new year toward "spiritualizing" the movement.

It's a disturbing trend. What does "spiritual insurrection" even mean? Nothing, to me, since the word "spiritual" is an empty box: a label attached to an empty space. From opening GAs with Native American prayers to Aryuvedic Medicine and solidarity with the Zapatistas over the solidarity with Detroit, the Occupy movement is going where only the fringe at the left of the 99% will go.

How about we get back to our "One Demand," AdBusters? Whatever happened to THAT?

...of social and economic relations of the time. It has no particular meaning beyond that, and as a I noted above, it has strong overtones from the American antislavery movement. I dare say Ralph Waldo Emerson himself would approve!

To respect those who choose to believe that there is such thing as a universal soul to which one can devote to in order to protest causes no great harm to those who wish to doubt such a notion. Tolerant multiculturalism is the way! Stop dividing, this is a question of fundamental justice, of whether we can in good conscience accept a nation in which the 1% feast while many of the 99% go hungry through no fault of their own, and to that I would add, no one deserves to go hungry, to suffer!

Love & Tolerate!



The faith-based people in our Occupy are on the radical end of the spectrum. Of course, for those who are both mainstream progressives and skeptics, and for the "Seth McFarlane" wing, that isn't much of a vote of confidence.

One of the things that's nice about the central messaging that Anons and Adbusters adopted early on was the "do not divide the movement" principle in an effort to get beyond divisive social issues. Hopefully that extends to not making said social issues the center of focus.

Eccentric art projects should be undertaken in service of the movement but I don't think we need be countercultural for its own sake.

BTW this was something Thomas Frank advocated early on in The Baffler in how to start a radical populist movement, even before he wrote What's The Matter With Kansas. There's another guy who focused on the overclass meme as well, a guy who used to be an (ex-) Republican strategist. He wrote a book on the unification of the American overclass. I forget his name.

It's not quite as fringe as you seem to think, since it encompasses everyone to the traditionally religious to Quakers and Buddhists to Wiccans and chaos magicians.

But it also extends beyond obvious belief systems and represents an attempt to label what is wrong with our culture as a whole. We live in a world where corporations are considered persons -- but are explicitly forbidden to operate according to moral principles. Things are more important than people and material possessions more important than self-fulfillment or dedication to a higher purpose.

And the word "spiritual," although it may not work for everyone, sums up better than anything else what is broken in our society and what many Occupiers see as needing fixing. The "one demand," if you will, from which all the others grow.