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Traite du Savoir-Vivre for the Occupy Wall Street Generations
Giordano, Al
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/4664/trait-du-savoir-vivre-occupy-wall-street-generationsDate Written: 2011-10-08 Publisher: The Field, USA Year Published: 2011 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX13637 Once upon a time, twenty thousand people descended on Wall Street, the capitol of capital, occupied it nonviolently, and won exactly what they demanded. This is not a fairy tale. It really happened. This is the story of how it happened. Abstract: - Excerpt: A then 20-something Renny Cushing and other Seabrook residents decided to try a different approach: Community organizing. And through a vote in the New England style "Town Meeting" form of government (in which the voters of a municipality assemble in public and vote, not by secret ballot, but in open view), the people of Seabrook had voted to oppose the construction of the nuke. Then it was no longer just an environmental issue. It was a matter of democracy itself. The people had voted, fair and square, the American way, and rejected the proposal for their town. From that point on, public opinion kept moving their way. They made their cause, thus, also a pro-democracy one. The strong and organized local base of the movement was the foundation that allowed all the rest to happen. The organizers were smart about that. Why were only 18 people arrested in the first occupation? Because the Clamshell Alliance decided that action would be limited only to New Hampshire residents. Everyone who participated in that and the subsequent occupations was required to go through a full day nonviolence training session. This requirement not only helped the encounters with the police and courts happen more effectively from a public relations standpoint. It also helped create a shared culture of resistance among all participants. The same was true of the southern Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nonviolence training was key to fomenting self-discipline and teamwork among the participants, two qualities of movements that win. In recent years, most protests in the United States have had no such requirement. Perhaps the organizations that call on people to join protests feel their numbers will be less if everyone had to spend an additional day, prior to the action, being trained. Maybe others feel it is too "authoritarian" or "exclusive" to require training, or require anything at all. Still others who fetishize violent conflict or rhetoric loathe the very word nonviolence. And so, since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, activist protests in the US have been plagued by parasitical grouposcules that hide under the skirt of the larger action to act out tactics that put every other participant at greater risk of arrest and harm. They smash store windows by throwing garbage cans at them and taunt cops with the cowardly knowledge that if things get rough they can simply run and hide among the rest of the crowd, letting somebody else receive the brunt of the police response. Subject Headings |