UPDATE: I thought this was useful in light of the issues of how the police treat different classes.
Yeah, we’re beginning to see the cracks in the class divide at the Occupy sites. Discuss!
”Liberalism’s inability to grasp the material conditions of inequality carries over to their orientation to the police. Of late, we have witnessed a twisted form of liberal peacenik policing: a disciplining of what is permitted to be said in the environment of the #Occupy movement. Statements of unalloyed support for non-violence and an attitude of collaboration with the police neutralizes the violence of everyday life under capital.
“How can there be non-violence when there are still police? How can we pretend the police are not our enemy when they’ve already arrested hundreds of our comrades in Occupy Wall Street, and daily rape, murder, and incarcerate people all over the country, people who are predominantly people of colour from the working class? More than anything, the 99 percent will be divided by our relationship to the cops.
“The statements, “The police are not our enemy” or “The cops are being really nice to us” are spoken from positions of privilege, from a lack of directly experienced police violence. We need to know that as soon as we present a threat to any element of capital — before this point, even — we will be violently repressed. Unless this knowledge is at the forefront of our minds, the first to be arrested will be those that are most vulnerable to police brutality and to breaches of security. (A journalist in the room is a tip-off to immigration officials, not “good press”.) No matter how “nice” a police officer may be to you, that does not change the fact that the police are a powerful instrument of violent repression, employed by a capitalist state to enforce its interests: namely, white supremacy, male domination, ruling class power, and the limitless pursuit of profit.
This movement has to stay non violent regardless of what the police do. Viewers at home are watching to 1.) see if it’s safe to join and 2.) make sure that there is no rioting that the media can portray in a negative light.
To gain mass and momentum, the movement has to be virtuous and good. That means non-violence.
Whoever wrote that (sexgenderbody) is either a crackpot or a right wing provocatuer. It should be disregarded because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
See post and discussion here.
1. Developing a reputation for non-violence is an important strategic asset.
2. The authorities split in both Tahrir Square and Madison WI
3. The first one to advocate violence is always the cop (or the plant).
A plant would be my guess, too. Somebody’s been asking Rove or his clones, “OMG. Whaddawedo? Whaddawedo?” Violence will discredit the movement faster than you could say “No taxes on the 1%!”
Gandhian non-violence was “non-violent non-cooperation”. Non violence as a tactic is one thing, and cooperation with the authorities is another thing. Non-violence is a deep philosophy that requires study, preparation, and training to understand and use. With a movement that is growing us as haphazardly as this one I am surprised that they have done as well as they have. It may also account for why it is so predominately white.
I’m all for non-violence, if only because what we have here is not a budding revolution but rather a backlash by people seeking, within the system, to close the yawning gap between rich and poor. This is not analogous to India or, say, the Jews fighting to end British rule in Palestine, using non-violent political action as well as the terrorist tactics of the Irgun. Violence would be a dead end here, because 1) public opinion would turn against OWS and 2) the cops would have an excuse to wipe out the protesters.