Tag: Anarchists

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 21

Wednesday
October 26, 2011
Weather
60 – 42 Partly cloudy

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I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Letter to City/State/Nation/World…Dear Ones …
     … among the stars, winding through back alleys
     boardrooms backyards fields plowed & fallow
     shattered glass we woke 

     last night we woke to a child’s cry
     to relieve ourselves     from dreams
     to the smell of smoke      to drums
     to helicopters in morning mist      to old men 
     foraging for rags and tobacco butts rich
     men setting the alarms lockstepping minds
     vaulting secret desires 

Dear World… 
     …last night we called 
     for clarifying questions, concerns of state amended 
     wings to woolen coats defied the northern wind 
     blew our tents like flags across the square, sang 
     songs unheard since the first
     king first 
     sent our children to slaughter our neighbors
     shackled our labor, heaped 
     wheat in towers while the people starved

Dear Wheeling Galaxies…
     … your billion sons & daughters
     on this speck of earth reclaim our commons
     throw off the shame of ownership, the prison state, release 
     love’s body, make all worlds 
     a home for all, hold 
     all in common – refuse!
     to end this song, refuse – to end
     this poem, this occupation – here
     begin again, here --
     here on the Commons of a thousand cities
     to begin again we rise, we rise again like 
     Adam in the garden of desire!

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55 Days of Occupy Philly: Days 17, 19, 20

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Weather Max and Min temps
10/16 – 66-50
10/17 – 57-45
10/18 – 53-38
10/19 – 55-35
10/20 – 71-47

Saturday
10/22/11
Day 17
If someone told me there was a full moon tonight I swear I’d start to take the folklore seriously.
…brought a proposal to the facilitation meeting—CoCo seems not to have met. With inexperienced facilitators, he virtually hi-jacked the GA—or tried to. A very frustrating, exhausting evening.

Already convinced, now doubly so, that we have to reconvene the noon GA—and get Tent City involved to bring us together.

Tomorrow morning—write for Tent City… newsletter—appeal to join working groups & help with the GA [which does nothing but generate petitions anymore].

Email concerns to Fac. list.

10/23/11
Day 18
Wrote piece for Camp newsletter.
12/24/11
Sunday
Day 19
First thing in the morning—begin day with email, gather info—correspondence—one to three hours. Did laundry. Red: Marx. Geo Oppen—wrote a poem. Back at City Hall at 4:00. Take the pulse. Talk. Listen. Gwen of Labor worried about losing Union Support if we oppose the construction. She goes to CoCo & takes the whole hour. No time to pee or get supper. Fac. super-efficient—15 minutes & we’re set for the GA. Time to pee—put no food left. GA went well. Discussed the arrests. Discussed the letter—a damn fine piece of writing & done by a committee—Droopy eyed young man grabs the Mic (the loud speaker Mic) goes on and on –after a woman hi-hacked it before him—when everyone else was doing People’s Mic. gonna propose for discussion—specially when not a big crowd—we turn off the Mic—NO mic, if someone has trouble with the rhythm of the People’s Mic—a facilitator goes out to help. Can’t let lone-rangers commandeer the mic for their personal agenda. Gives one person all the power.

Tuesday
10/25/11
Day 20
Down to my last $3.00—till next week. Another poem. Didn’t get off the computer till noon—not even time for breakfast–& lotta stuff I didn’t have time to read. Need to get up earlier.

Another poem. Came here (City Hall) at 2:30. About 20 after four now—crisp fall day, clear sky. Sitting at the Fac station. Rest for 30 minutes—go to Suburban Station restroom—Coco/Fac/… then GA.

Yes, we have made them…
the glass towers, the stone monuments
to every principle we have ever betrayed
a billion messages rising
invisibly…

what we choose
to ignore
has chosen us

the glass towers, the billions—
how they in turn
have made –
are making

us

their shadows
growing new powers

the planet turning
on its seasons

reaching hand to outstretched hand
raising
one another from our knees
taking up again the burden 
the terrible lightness of freedom

Occupy-Philly-Marches-On

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 14: growing divisions

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click 55 Days of Occupy Philly.
Wednesday Day 14
10/19/11
Weather: temp max 66, min. 60.
rain – .93 inches

11:02 Slept late kicking last of cold. Dreams of eviction—Occupation from… where Where Job Chillaway Pottery used to be. ½ hour responding to Occupy email. Shower & breakfast.

Rain.
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Need to check weather. Wrote in time of International meeting on remaining 35 or so fliers to pass out at GA tonight, and tomorrow afternoon.
Can I get in 15 minutes reading time before I go?
—
I did.
It’s a start

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GA in Friend’s Center –rain. (This is the Friend’s Meeting House, but photo looks like it was take at the Dec. 10, Occupy Together Meeting. Very hard to match the photos with particular days or actions–I do it when I can.)

Deputy Mayor Negin [asshole of the first order] dropped by the Media tent & caused a bit of a stir. City not happy that it’s taking so long to set up communications. [this is classic colonizing strategy: it’s what the US did in dealing with First Nation peoples, bribing, cajoling, intimidating, forcing them to create internal judicial and governing structures that resembled the colonizers if they were to deal with them at all, weakening their own traditional structures by setting up competing power centers—the one’s authorized to negotiate with the outside power, and those that more closely followed their traditional roles. (The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. Vine Deloria Jr & Clifford Lytle, New York, 1984) Later, like following a script, people in Occupy took it on themselves to play the same game, becoming the Occupy Philly that the city wanted them to be, and creating distracting and artificial divisions like those endless debates about applying for permits]

Tomorrow—Occupy International (or Global) first meeting.
Need to address/acknowledge Messaging’s call for a Regional Assembly: concern that while a call for such a meeting is welcome—in absence of any concrete proposals for how this is to be done, by whom, & what it’s to look like—it remains a rhetorical declaration. This committee would like to join with Messaging, Tech and perhaps other WG’s to begin discussing/exploring what actual implications might evolve.

In this light—need someone to begin gathering info on what other Occupations are doing—establish communication (with help of Messaging) with corresponding WG’s.

Translation Team
This could be itself a cross-Occupation effort (Tech help)
Goal: establish regular exchange of bulletins/news—(an inter-Occupation News Service?) Multi-lingual!

Meta-discussions: transition from local consensus to representative assemblies—models for consideration, how this might work.

Set up on-line forums for meta-concerns—that might segue into conferences—emphasis, as local democracy depends for success on ample scope for conversation—open mics etc – before decisions can be made in assemblies,
so larger organs need space to sound out ideas preceding decision making bodies.

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55 Days of Occupy Philly: 11 and 12. going global

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click 55 Days of Occupy Philly.
10/14//11

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Monday
10/17/11
Day 11 Sick yesterday—much better today. Home early last night—watched GA live-stream. Went for a process meeting today at 4:00. Me & Alex. No one else showed up. Went to CoCo—facilitated, then came home. Watched GA again livestream–& monitored chat on the side—try to counter mis-information. Tomorrow a reading. Hope my voice is back. Expect I’ll be called on for facilitation team at GA.

Tuesday
10/18/11 11:04 AM Day 12
Two days ago felt quite sick. Yesterday (after a bad night—waking every 15-20 minutes to clear my nose), considerable improvement. Today—somewhat congested, but pretty much over it. Voice coming back. Leave in few minutes to confirm Friends Center for our inter-occupy meeting Thurs. at 6:00. Come home. Back for poetry reading/performance at 3:00, probably stay through the GA.

Make Glossary of Occupy Terms?

Proposal at GA: support requested from Occupy DC for a National Assembly [this turned out to be a can of worms… there were two groups claiming to be Occupy DC] –couldn’t respond in discussions cause I was on facilitation team—made announcement after proposal was over. Philly’s cross-Occupy working group taking on these same concerns. DC letter said nothing about how this was to be accomplished. Things moving so fast its hard to keep up. Occupy camps in Taipei, Tokyo, Iceland, Paris…how to build structure with so little time? Neither NY—nor DC should be World centers for this—maybe a rotating central point more consistent with horizontal power structures.

Skeleton team on facilitation. Need to extend education-outreach internally to get more peeps involved. We’re at a transition point—finding who’s in it for the long run. Why aren’t more campers involved in process? Why only Alex and me at Monday’s process meeting? Have to get there for the noon camp-site meet.
A proposal to restore noon GA—but for proposals specific to those living on the site & site conditions… We are all sanitation? No we’re not.

422 tents as of this AM. That’s nearly 1000 living on Dilworth Plaza now.

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55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 9

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click 55 Days of Occupy Philly.
10/14//11
10/15/11
Saturday
Day 9 Getting to be work. The celebrity fizz on the stage don’t last long—it’s a job to be done. 5 hours of meetings. Process at 5:00. Facilitation at 6:00. GA at 7:00… over early tonight—9:15. A scary proposal from CoCo—that they should relay proposals submitted by WG’s directly, no longer select which one’s were ready for prime time—all would come to the GA for the GA to vote on which ones should be presented for decision. Generated by criticism of the GA as elitist, lack of transparency. how can you get more transparent—anyone can go, sit in, vote on what the WG’s bring. Deep breath… relief. Proposal rejected. Only a handful were for it. GA’s would have gone on till midnight.
I did stack.
Very tired but less than last night—way less than night before. learning to find my pace.

Almost every day, Direct Action takes the streets.

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Hundreds of Occupy movements across Europe. Sooner or later, the big crush will come. Power don’t give up power without a fight. Think they may be counting on winter to thin us out, wear us down. As though we’re gonna all go home & forget about it.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 8

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I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click 55 Days of Occupy Philly.
10/14//11
Friday 11:02 AM

Day 8 Up at 7:00.
Feel somewhat rested.
Morning spent on circulating idea for Occupy International –already have a Working group meeting scheduled so can send bottom liners to CoCo, get on stacks to announce at tonight’s GA.
Off to Liberty Plaza

Occupation – International

We would like to see an Occupy Philadelphia Working Group to
1) Begin plans to establish a regular, trans-Occupation WG
2) 2) … to set up communications & Tech infrastructure
3) 3)… to plan for Regional

     National
           International
           Occupation conferences to discuss Meta issues
          … and begin the process of how to formulate
           Cooperative Plans of Action
           we can bring back to our local sites.
           We are already an international movement.

           It’s time to take the next step.

           Peace & Solidarity

           Jacob Spirit-Stick

New York – they canceled the scheduled “cleaning” … crisis postponed. Bloomberg is a fascist asshole.

[What eventually came of this was a regional day-long
workshop at the Friend’s Center in December—which was
a total flop. Nothing but Power Point bullshit run
by corporate trained, if well meaning, “leaders”
who took the thing over and squashed every spontaneous, creative, radical impulse.]

Came home for nap. Made a difference. Another long GA. I never would have imagined being in a group this big where nearly everyone was more militant than me…

an impression that grossly misread the temper
of those who were there… as it became more apparent
that most people favored appeasement and compromise,
and the GA’s came to be increasingly dominated by
liberal moderates, while the anarchists and radicals
began to abandon the decision making process, leaving
the GA’s to those who used them, more and more,for
making useless petitions.

At this point, I hadn’t caught on to what was
happening—still caught in the euphoria (OP was only a week
and day old). I was late in recognizing how
poorly our process had kept up with how things had
been developing. Joining the facilitation team likely
contributed to that. The whole thing was pretty much
on its way to fragmenting into different affinity
groups with no center, or desire for one. ]

… the city wants to talk… they don’t understand our decision making process. We’ve become in a week, a different culture—nonhierarchical, inclusive.
[… another misperception. By this time, most of the few POC who had been there at the beginning, had left]

Spend so much time—if not on site—answering & writing email, responding to posts & comments on web pages—that I have no time or mental energy left to write.
Occupy International now an official WG. This is how we keep the revolutionary potential alive. We’re ants in a herd of elephants [grossly overestimating our outside support]—but there’s way more ants than elephants—and we can crawl into holes where they’re too big to follow.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: days 5-7

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click:  55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Monday
10/10 Day 5
96 tents last night. Encampment still clean and orderly.

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Tuesday
10/11/11
6:00 PM Day 6
Clouds closing over.
Facilitators meeting (went to training at 4:00). Blanket stolen yesterday—discovered when I went to my matt to sleep.

horns and chants

Process unchanged.

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10/12/11
Wednesday Day 7
Leave for KWH in 5 min. Jerome Rothenberg. Took late evening & ½ dy off for R&R. Facilitated Porta Potty proposal at GA last day.
Slept till 7:30 this morning.
Straightened & organized writing space & computer table. Working out schedule to give time to read and write.
Lucky 13
10:00 PM – one glass of wine—try to get up at 5:00 AM—gonna be a long day. Maybe not. I’m really tired & the food group seems to be managing. Gil worked for a while there today. I bottom-lined the GA. Light rain at first—when it began to come down hard we moved to the Friend’s Center. Met in the 1515 Cherry Street Meeting house.

Jerome Rothenberg looks so stern in his photos—a dear sweet man in person. Began the reading with a soda-can-rattle—chanting an Amer-Indian song.
Thursday
10/13/11 One week

	Glass towers lost in fog
… searching for facilitation
so many cops today
red arm bands announce
civility(?)      Affairs 
            of state 
            bear arms
A quarter to 12 (noon not midnight)
and still no 
                 sign
                       no final word
                           no end in sight

7:55 PM
Temple Center City.. poetry. (across 15th Street) I left the GA early—a contentious issue coming up on the agenda. I’ll have to find out what happened tomorrow. I can’t find words for how tired I am. While waiting for the facilitation meeting, I lay down on one of the wet marble benches—on my back, and fell asleep almost as soon as I closed my eyes. Hallucinate half-dreams. Poetry. I needed a break—not sure I can stay awake.

After the reading I went back across the street. They were only beginning to vote on the response to the City’s second ‘liaison’ proposal – 7 amendments. Three hour GA, not over till 10:00

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We All Go Into the Dark

singapore-21

The photo –because Singapore represents a particularly frightening form of alien dystopia for me.

The Darkness Before the Right

I suggest reading this in conjunction with Deleuze & Guattari: The Eternal Return of Accelerating Capital, posted on Alien Ecologies.

A right-wing politics for the coming century is taking shape. And it’s not slowing down.
by Park MacDougald September 28, 2015

More generally, critics of capitalism have often argued that it is an inhuman system, and that our task is to somehow subject it to our collective political will. If we don’t, it will destroy us all. Land agrees that this is the issue at hand, but sides with capitalism nonetheless. And if “the Cathedral” is the name for attempts to throw the emergency brake on the capitalist machine, Land’s neoreaction is a sort of secular Satanism, effectively suggesting that it would be better to just end it all anyway. Or – perhaps most frightening – that we no longer even have a choice. As the sci-fi author and artist Doug Coupland recently put it in the FT:

The darkest thought of all may be this: no matter how much politics is applied to the internet and its attendant technologies, it may simply be far too late in the game to change the future. The internet is going to do to us whatever it is going to do, and the same end state will be achieved regardless of human will. Gulp.

Read the rest HERE.

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Day 2

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, Click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

10/7/11
Friday Day 2

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5:45 AM To sleep on my mat—quilted blanket—sound of trucks, buses, people talking—grows quieter—slip into dreams with the same images, sounds– in dreams as waking. Aware even in sleep how quiet—how strangely quiet it’s become. See shadow forms of sleepers wrapped in blankets when I open my eyes. Reasonably warm.
—
Gradual stir, city waking up. Buses queuing up for first run. Street venders bringing in their carts. I’m awake. Sit up. Pull on the heavy sweater I got from Ecuadorian street venders years ago.
Walk the rounds. Shadow tents. Shadow sleepers. Here & there someone up. Conversations. The permit. Do we apply? Do we go without? Told that Nutter came down around 1:00 AM. Talked with people at Safety. Thanks for keeping people safe. Talk with Medical about coming cold. Young woman—food crew—trying to sleep on two chairs—a single blanket. Looks cold. Take one of my blankets & cover her.

Man comes by with two boxes of Dunkin Munchkins. I open them and put them out on the breakfast snack table.
The day begins.

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LINK from NEWSWORKS

LINK from  METRO