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May 25, 2013
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 Mad, Passionate Love and Violence: Occupy Heads Into the SpringPosted on Feb 22, 2012
By Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch This piece originally appeared at TomDispatch. When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them—or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter. Until they did. Revolutions are always like this: at first all men are brothers and anything is possible, and then, if you’re lucky, the romance of that heady moment ripens into a relationship, instead of a breakup, an abusive marriage, or a murder-suicide. Occupy had its golden age, when those who never before imagined living side-by-side with homeless people found themselves in adjoining tents in public squares. All sorts of other equalizing forces were present, not least the police brutality that battered the privileged the way that inner-city kids are used to being battered all the time. Part of what we had in common was what we were against: the current economy and the principle of insatiable greed that made it run, as well as the emotional and economic privatization that accompanied it. Advertisement And then came the people who’d been damaged far more, the psychologically fragile, the marginal, and the homeless—some of them endlessly needy and with a huge capacity for disruption. People who had come to fight the power found themselves staying on to figure out available mental-health resources, while others who had wanted to experience a democratic society on a grand scale found themselves trying to solve sanitation problems. And then there was the violence. The Faces of Violence The most important direct violence Occupy faced was, of course, from the state, in the form of the police using maximum sub-lethal force on sleepers in tents, mothers with children, unarmed pedestrians, young women already penned up, unresisting seated students, poets, professors, pregnant women, wheelchair-bound occupiers, and octogenarians. It has been a sustained campaign of police brutality from Wall Street to Washington State the likes of which we haven’t seen in 40 years. On the part of activists, there were also a few notable incidents of violence in the hundreds of camps, especially violence against women. The mainstream media seemed to think this damned the Occupy movement, though it made the camps, at worst, a whole lot like the rest of the planet, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, seethes with violence against women. But these were isolated incidents. That old line of songster Woody Guthrie is always handy in situations like this: “Some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.” The police have been going after occupiers with projectile weapons, clubs, and tear gas, sending some of them to the hospital and leaving more than a few others traumatized and fearful. That’s the six-gun here. But it all began with the fountain pens, slashing through peoples’ lives, through national and international economies, through the global markets. These were wielded by the banksters, the “vampire squid,” the deregulators in D.C., the men—and with the rarest of exceptions they were men—who stole the world. That’s what Occupy came together to oppose, the grandest violence by scale, the least obvious by impact. No one on Wall Street ever had to get his suit besmirched by carrying out a foreclosure eviction himself. Cities provided that service for free to the banks (thereby further impoverishing themselves as they created new paupers out of old taxpayers). And the police clubbed their opponents for them, over and over, everywhere across the United States.
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By EmileZ, February 24, 2012 at 8:02 pm Link to this comment
@ Tom Degan
Isn’t it convenient for Apple to manufacture it’s “revolutionary” products thousands of miles away behind The Great Firewall of China and that the exploited workers couldn’t afford own any of these devices that make “citizen journalism” possible.
Report thisBy IMax, February 23, 2012 at 11:27 am Link to this comment
vector56, - “You confuse passion with anger.”
-
A minor detail - I wrote that you seem passionate but warned against ‘appearing angry’.
I agree with you on Carl Levin but for different reasons. He is a snake. Of course he was a useful snake during the George W. administration.
Report thisBy vector56, February 23, 2012 at 10:52 am Link to this comment
“I would caution against appearing angry”
You confuse passion with anger.
“Question: Where are you drawing the line between Carl Levin “the sell out” and Carl Levin simply disagreeing with you?”
Carl Levin and John McCain; 2012 defense authorization bill
Carl Levin a man (among others) who has pumped “billions” of our tax payer dollars into the pockets of his defense contractor buddies truncating the hopes and dreams of millions of US citizens for a more just country.
Simply put, Levin is one of many “snakes” among us who gut us from the inside out for his corporate masters.
Report thisBy IMax, February 23, 2012 at 7:11 am Link to this comment
vector56,
You appear to be a passionate person. I would caution against appearing angry. The latter will prove only to minimize/isolate you and the OWS message I believe in.
Question: Where are you drawing the line between Carl Levin “the sell out” and Carl Levin simply disagreeing with you?
Report thisBy IMax, February 23, 2012 at 6:44 am Link to this comment
I believe OWS would benefit from understanding the lyrics to REVOLUTION by the Beatles!
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can
But when you want money
For people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
All right, all right
Ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah…
You say you’ll change the constitution
Report thisWell, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
By Tom Degan, February 23, 2012 at 6:19 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
You don’t have to be down in Zuccotti Park. You don’t have to be on the streets of Oakland, California or Madison, Wisconsin or Austin, Texas or South Bend, Indiana. You won’t have to be out in Ulme Park in Poughkeepsie, NY this afternoon at 4 PM in order to be a part of this movement. That’s why the worldwide Occupy movement is so frightening, not only to the corporate media, but to our “rulers” as well. Jello Biafra is the former lead singer of the legendary political punk band The Dead Kennedys. He is today a lecturer who has released a number of spoken-word CD’s on his Alternative Tentacles record label . Ten years ago, in a statement that is truly sunning in hindsight, he advised us, “Don’t criticize the media, become the media!” A decade ago his words left some of us scratching our clueless heads. Today we know what he was talking about. We are the media. The revolution is being televised!
Thank you, Steve Jobs.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Report thisBy vector56, February 22, 2012 at 7:01 pm Link to this comment
You are very welcome EmileZ;
Report thisThe song seems to capture the Spirit of “Occupy”. I can see myself this summer hanging out in front of my “sell-out” Congress man’s office (Carl Levin)singing a few bars of this song.
By EmileZ, February 22, 2012 at 6:53 pm Link to this comment
@ vector56
I heard this on Democracy Now some time ago and was moved to the verge of happiness or something.
It is perhaps a good song to add lyrics to as well.
Thanks~!!!
Report thisBy vector56, February 22, 2012 at 6:32 pm Link to this comment
Why is this song (“We are the many”) by Makana not the official Occupy Song?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE
“Ye come here, gather ‘round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage”
“From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw”
The back story of how Makana sang this song at the APEC meeting in Hawaii (Obama) was there is more than enough to give the boy a hand!
Report thisBy vector56, February 22, 2012 at 6:26 pm Link to this comment
Why is this song “We are the Many” by Makana not the official Occupy song?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE
Ye come here, gather ‘round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage
From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
‘Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight
They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none
So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest
We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
You can’t divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can’t buy
Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
We are the many
Report thisYou are the few