Amsterdam: Persistent resistance at the 01-11-11 eviction wave
Today, the 1st of November 2011, there were quite a few squats on the list to be evicted in Amsterdam, including a popular social centre and squats where the owners did not start a courtcase yet.
After the successful “reclaim the hood” manifestation (posting in dutch language, but with photos) the squatters in Amsterdam started preparing for the “eviction circus” on 1/11/11, and that went very well.
It took the cops more than a full 12 hour day to evict more than five squats where people were inside with lockons (photo from webcam). This was a clear victory for the squatters.
Enacting the Impossible
(On Consensus Decision Making)
David Graeber
On August 2, 2011 at the very first meeting of what was to become Occupy Wall Street, about a dozen people sat in a circle in Bowling Green. The self-appointed “process committee” for a social movement we merely hoped would someday exist, contemplated a momentous decision. Our dream was to create a New York General Assembly: the model for democratic assemblies we hoped to see spring up across America. But how would those assemblies actually operate?
The anarchists in the circle made what seemed, at the time, an insanely ambitious proposal. Why not let them operate exactly like this committee: by consensus.
"Occupy Oakland Reports to Occupied London"
Anonymous Comrades
[This dispatch was composed by J. and read out at the General Assembly of Occupy London in front of St Paul's Cathedral at 7:30, Thursday 27th October. Appended to it are two messages that came in from S. and D. later in the evening, and which have been passed on to the Occupied Times of London. IB]
"To our sisters and brothers at Occupy London, from Oakland, California, greetings.
On Tuesday there were about 2000 of us on the streets in Oakland. There were some scuffles and gas attacks by the police during a march which wound its way during the evening to the Plaza where the eviction had taken place early in the morning.
The march arrived at 14th and Broadway about 7.30 p.m. Cops from throughout California had blocked all entrances to the park, which was no simple matter as it has about six approaches. Cops were also stationed at all the freeway entrances, recalling a demo last year that managed to block the 880 freeway during rush hour.
So within the space of 12 hours we had a diabolical inversion whereby the police were occupying Oscar Grant Plaza while we, the 99%, occupied the streets.
"David Graeber on Debt, Deficit and Catastrophe"
Jay Kernis, CNN
Answering today’s [July 5, 2011] OFF-SET questions is David Graeber, who teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of “Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value,” “Lost People,” and “Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire.”
David Graeber studied 5,000 years of debt: real dirty secret is that if the deficit ever completely went away, it would cause a major catastrophe.
His new book is entitled “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” and in it, Graeber indeed examines the historical significance of debt, the struggle between rich and poor, and the moral implications inherent in our ideas about credit and debt.
The U.S. Treasury Department last Friday reiterated its Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling, and urged Congress "to avoid the catastrophic economic and market consequences of a default crisis by raising the statutory debt limit in a timely manner.” The White House wants a deal by July 22. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, the Treasury would not be able to pay nearly half of the 80 million payments it needs to make every month, according to an estimate by budget experts at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Q.: How did the United States get into this situation?
A: Because the Republicans are engaged in one of the most extraordinary campaigns of political recklessness in recent memory.
The Man Behind Occupy Wall Street
Seth Fiegerman
Forget the labor unions. A University of London anarchist and anthropologist is a major force behind the protest movement.
When he's not busy brainstorming how to tear apart and rebuild America's democratic system, David Graeber prefers to think about simpler things, like why we still don't have flying cars.
Graeber, a professor at the University of London and a widely respected anthropologist, has achieved a new level of fame in recent weeks for his early influence on the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City and have since spread around the world.
The Wall Street Journal declared Graeber to be "the single academic who has done the most to shape the nascent movement," while Bloomberg Businessweek declared him to be the "anti-leader" of Occupy Wall Street who generally abstains from the limelight even as his writings,
including a new book on the history of debt and the influence of money, serve as an "intellectual frame" for the protesters.
Anthropologist Graeber Turns Radical Side Loose in Zuccotti Park Protest
Drake Bennett
David Graeber likes to say that he had three goals for the year: promote his book, learn to drive, and launch a worldwide revolution. The first is going well, the second has proven challenging, and the third is looking up.
Graeber is a 50-year-old anthropologist -- among the brightest, some argue, of his generation -- who made his name with innovative theories on exchange and value, exploring phenomena such as Iroquois wampum and the Kwakiutl potlatch. An American, he teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.
He’s also an anarchist and radical organizer, a veteran of many of the major left-wing demonstrations of the past decade: Quebec City and Genoa, the Republican National Convention protests in Philadelphia and New York, the World Economic Forum in New York in 2002, the London tuition protests this year.
Occupy to Self Manage
By Michael Albert
I have yet to see my nearest large occupation, Boston, or the precursor of all U.S. occupations, Wall Street. Instead, I have been on the road for the past six weeks in Thesselonika and Athens Greece; Istanbul and Diyarbikar Turkey; Lexington, Kentucky; London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia Spain.
In all these places, I talked with diverse individuals at many meetings and popular assemblies. I met people involved in occupations, as well as audiences assembled by my hosts to hear about participatory economics. Beyond addressing assigned topics, my own priority was to learn about local movements. I repeatedly asked what folks struggling for many months wished to say to other folks first embarking on similar paths.
The Revolutionary Intervention in the Crisis of Modernism:
Democratic Autonomy, Turkey, and the Kurdish Movement
Cengiz Baysoy, Otonom
Both the Turkish state and the left have been in deadlock in terms of understanding the point the Kurdish political movement has come up to. The state and the modernist left both have difficulty making sense of a national political movement which criticizes and refuses the paradigm of “nation state.”
The traditional point of view of the modernist left on the issue is as follows: “The right of nations to self-determination is the right to political borders and independence against imperialism, i.e. the right to a nation state. Furthermore, unless this right has an anti-imperialist character, it is impossible to be progressive.”
The left considers the Kurdish political movement from this political point of view, and tries to take this movement under the political dominion of this paradigm. It seems that the modernist left is incapable of making sense of the Kurdish political movement other than this way, whereas the Kurdish political movement thinks and speaks very differently from this political paradigm.
No More Bubble-Gum
Mike Davis
Who could have envisioned Occupy Wall Street and its sudden
wildflower-like profusion in cities large and small?
John Carpenter could have, and did. Almost a quarter of a century ago
(1988), the master of date-night terror (Halloween, The Thing), wrote
and directed They Live, depicting the Age of Reagan as a catastrophic
alien invasion. In one of the film’s brilliant early scenes, a huge
third-world shantytown is reflected across the Hollywood Freeway in
the sinister mirror-glass of Bunker Hill’s corporate skyscrapers.
They Live remains Carpenter’s subversive tour de force. Few who’ve
seen it could forget his portrayal of billionaire bankers and evil
mediacrats and their zombie-distant rule over a pulverized American
working class living in tents on a rubble-strewn hillside and begging
for jobs. From this negative equality of homelessness and despair, and
thanks to the magic dark glasses found by the enigmatic Nada (played
by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), the proletariat finally achieves interracial
unity, sees through the subliminal deceptions of capitalism, and gets
angry.
Very angry.
Who Bombed Judi Bari?
Darryl Cherney at the Libertarian Book Club, NYC
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 7:30pm, Brecht Forum
"The story behind the 1990 terror attack in Oakland on ecological defenders struggling to protect some of the last surviving old-growth redwoods from the timber barons"
The Libertarian Book Club,* New York City's oldest continuously active anarchist institution (founded 1946), kicks off the fall season of its Anarchist Forum series as legendary Northern California songster and activist Darryl Cherney returns to his native New York for a sneak-preview screening of his new film Who Bombed Judi Bari?—revealing the story behind the 1990 terror attack in Oakland on ecological defenders struggling to protect some of the last surviving old-growth redwoods from the timber barons. Director Mary Liz Thomson will also be on hand.
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