Uncrushable

Uncrushable 22 November 2011

Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!, WAR!.
trackback

From a so wonderful gallery of Occupy poster art at the Guardian. Occupy Penang, Occupy Arkansas, Occupy Las Vegas (that place is REALLY in trouble), Toronto, Canberra, of course London…. one mocking the dreadful, commercial poster of Obama in 2008… on and on it goes.

So hard to pick, but finally of course, OWS had to lead the day:

.
Occupy Wall Street – Photograph: Buzzfeed.com

I don’t think they can crush it. Tho obviously they have only just begun to try.

In that vein as I was reading this very good piece, I wondered if one could ever retrieve the other Martin, not Martin of the dream speech (much less that travesty, as I call it, Three Gorges Dam Martin)… but a more complex version.

November 22, 2011

Are We Going to Hell?

Violence Goes to College

by VIJAY PRASHAD

Before the assassin’s bullet cut him down, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been preparing his sermon for Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church. The sermon was called “Why America May Go to Hell.” The theme of the sermon was simple, that the failure to address the acute social crisis in the country had already begun to lead to dangerous violence. A protest in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, on behalf of striking sanitation workers led to mayhem. King escaped from what he had thought would be a non-violent march and remarked, “We live in a sick nation. Maybe we just have to admit that the day of violence is here, and maybe we have to just give up and let violence take its course.”

Such a statement is unusual in King’s repertoire, which is mainly positive and hopeful. By 1968, the carefully wrought counter-revolution to the liberation movements would soon make its appearance. The most dramatic instances were the assassinations of the standard-bearers of liberalism (King in April, Robert F. Kennedy in June). Less dramatic would be the shooting of college students, busy fighting the remnants of segregation and refusing to go shoot at the Vietnamese. Little remembered now is the killing of students on February 8, 1968, when South Carolina’s highway patrol officers shot and killed Delano Middleton, Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond as they tried to protest a segregated bowling alley in Orangeburg. No longer was the violence to come from below. It was more likely to come from above, to be the violence of the counter-revolution.

Campus militancy reached its highest point perhaps by the spring of 1969, when about a third of most students participated in one way or another in the demonstrations. It was in this context that California’s Governor Ronald Reagan said of the students, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.” On May 4, 1970, four lay dead in Ohio (Jeffery Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer – average age 19 years and 6 months). Reagan got his bloodbath.

. . . . .

There is a gallery of photos of the Occupy Librairies too…. In the closer shots, clearly showing uncracked spines and crisp covers, I see lots of new books. IMO people were, in an appreciable measure, donating newly purchased books to the libraries.

.
London
‘Will Hutton’s The State We’re In is shelved alongside Subcomandante Marcos’s Zapatista Stories, Dean Koontz’s The Husband piled on top of Brian Friel’s Translations’ … the Occupy London library at St Paul’s Cathedral – Photograph: Richard Lea

*******

In highly peevish news, some people are still stuck on what women do. And does it have, you know, VALUE. Because of course what women do for the cause must be vetted. Must be found to have value.

Lordy.

About these ads

Comments»

1. diane - 22 November 2011: .

Reply
2. diane - 22 November 2011: Chancellor Katehi’s impressive learning skill

…. So apparently — yet again — the only way everyone can begin to “heal” and “move forward” is if everyone agrees that those in power with the greatest responsibility be fully shielded from any consequences and that their bad acts be simply forgotten.

an ancient, ‘well’ worn, recipe for death.

set the majority against the majority.

that majority, meant to be awestruck and lockstep, behind a handful of sociopaths who can never have enough power ….

when will we tire of it …..

Reply
diane - 22 November 2011: pondering, …… I really think the fair thing to do, … is to send Katehi back to Greece and let her, once again, rise above, in her Meritocracy ™ … by her Bootstraps ™, … to show all, … how it’s done, … in such Austerity!

And well, if she jus can’t make it, I’ve heard the inmates at Riker’s, are preparing Turkey dinners!!!!!!!, for their, … soon to be ,… neighbors.

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: I’ve thought all along she should be sent back. AND the husband. Take responsiblity. START THE FUCK OVER. The fact she sounds like a lousy tedious whiner jst increases the irritation.

Good bye.

Reply
diane - 22 November 2011: awwfreedezain farewell!!!! good fuckin luck, you despicable flecks of shit …

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: Live… the UC Davis meeting… she is addressing the assembled (I have on KRON TV 4). It’s indoors, run by the school. She simply blames the C of Cmpus Police and the Lt.
that’ll go down well with the cops… snicker.

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: it will be fascinating to see how katehi and the UCDPD responds to the general strike on monday.

Reply
3. Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: Tracking Journalist Arrests at Occupy Protests Around the Country

Reply
4. Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: A couple of good posts up at Lenin’s Tomb. The first one: Occupy vs police repression

There are a number of reasons for this. First, this is a movement that is still in its upswing. A full-frontal attack on a movement which is still growing, and still popular, can be a dangerous mistake to make. The problem for the authorities is that such an assault isn’t a technical operation but a political wager. As technically proficient as a repressive manouevre may be, the political effects aren’t easily calculable: the same tactic that kills a movement today may consolidate it tomorrow. Second, as the statement from Occupy Wall Street following the eviction notes, the movement is serious. This seems nebulous, moralising even, but it has a precise political meaning: most of those joining the movement fully expected repression, and were mentally prepared for it. There are arguments that the police are just blue collar workers who should be on the side of the 99% – though, when former NYPD police capitain Ray Lewis asserts that his ex-colleagues are “workers for the 1%” and “mercenaries for Wall Street”, one can safely say that such arguments are losing traction. But the occupation in Wall Street came to national prominence following a particularly brutal NYPD assault. It is a simple but reasonable inference that those who joined OWS and embarked on similar projects after this, knew that repression was a risk. So, the movement is far less brittle in this respect than its opponents perhaps estimated.

Third, as a former head of the CBI has pointed out, the ideology of free market capitalism has lost a significant part of its material basis: it cannot as easily claim to be more efficient than rival forms of organisation, or delivery greater prosperity for the majority over the long run. The increasing sympathy for socialism and communism among Americans has something to do with this disintegration of capitalist ideology. There is enormous sympathy for this left-populist movement, and those deemed complicit in its repression run the risk of being publicly shamed and of losing allies rapidly. Fourth, and relatedly, the repressive response from the ruling class may be coordinated and bipartisan, but it is far from unanimous. Some elements of the ruling class have preferred to try and co-opt the movement rather than simply attack it. This is most visible in the liberal segments of the capitalist media. From the very early days, it was obvious that the New York Times and perhaps also MSNBC favoured co-option rather than simple coercion. The fear of the banking industry, as their professional lobbyists have summarised it, is that this strategic fracturing of US ruling class opinion may be disadvantageous to their position. As they are not their own best advocates, they require public advocates – and the fear is that politicians under pressure to respond to such a movement will consider it imprudent to publicly defend financial capital. But the more the repressive option fails, the more the emphasis will fall on co-option. Finally, the occupiers have worked hard to build alliances with groups who already know how to wield disruptive power and have their own sets of repertoires. The response to the first attempted assault on Occupy Wall Street was based on an alliance with unions; the response to the first assault on Occupy Oakland, a city-wide ‘general strike’, was based on an alliance with the unions too. Of course, one must be wary of what Glenn Greenwald detects is an effort by pro-Obama union leaders to direct the movement into the Democratic fold. And solidarity work has taken other forms, such as the attempt to obstruct foreclosures. But there is a genuine convergence of interests between organised labor and the heterogenous groups assembled at OWS – whether debt-shackled students, workers, the unemployed, or dissident former soldiers. The union leadership knows it, especially after the defeat of the union-bashers in Ohio. The alliance between these groups has to be negotiated and constructed. But the material basis for it, which the slogan ‘we are the 99%’ communicates, is a shared class interest. This shared interest, at a time of sharpening class antagonisms, is making solidarity easier to achieve, and is laying the basis for a new Left.

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: Slob was heckled today while addressing some assembled multitude in NH at some HS, not for the 20 seconds some media say, but for a full minute….

There will be more. And he’ll get less and less calm and fake gracious about it…

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: I thought his insistence about “helping” with his tiny student loan thing went over like a lead balloon, too.

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: It’s meaningless…. the whole student loan, rising tuition, less and less being taught, thing ran rampant pretty much for close to two decades.. and just got increasingly worse. Sick fuck alliances is WHY the bullshit Dems always prattle “get an education” NOT for any other reason.

Reply
5. Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: and this one is amazing: Occupy Tahrir Square

Speaking of bungled acts of repression, the Egyptian military’s assault on protesters after last Friday’s mass protest has revived the country’s revolutionary movement and (so I hear) put a general strike on the agenda. Tahrir Square has been retaken. This image (left) shows what the square looked like on Friday. Following the protest, which was against the military council’s usurpation of dictatorial power, dozens of people decided to stay on in the square overnight. They were assaulted by troops using tear gas and rubber bullets in a bid to clear the square. The resulting uproar saw tens of thousands drawn back out onto the square. Repeated assaults seem only to have broadened the array of groups willing to stand against the military. Beyond Tahrir, there have been mass protests in Alexandria and Suez, among other places. The assembly of forces looks remarkably similar to that in February – trade unionists, liberals, socialists, Nasserists and Islamists, all out against the regime. There are now calls for international solidarity as the revolutionary movement, in tens of thousands not dozens, faces down rubber bullets and tear gas. The country’s trade unions are calling for their 1.4m members to join protesters in the Tahrir Square sit-in. The struggle is still ‘in the balance’, as it were, but what a turnaround.

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: Today was amazing at the Sq.. …. I was torn, because Guardian has good picture galleries up on Tahrir Sq too… But I have waited to see the posters and graphic art rising from Occupy…

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: those egyptians are incredibly tough. i really hope they win this thing.

Reply
6. Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: An Open Letter to the Winter Patriot

Those that take this oath seriously are faced with a terrible conflict. You must battle internally between the affirmation that you will place your body between the social contract embedded in the Constitution and those that seek its destruction, while maintaining your loyalty to the government you serve and the orders issued by its officers. Sadly, society has placed a twin tax upon you by asking that you sacrifice both your body and your morality. This tax has been levied solely upon you overseas, and soon they’ll come to collect domestically. Your government in its expression of corporate interests relies upon your tenacity to endure, and your relentless willingness to sacrifice. And so you do.

Now, more than ever we need your sacrifice. But, I’m asking you to soldier in a different way. If called upon to deny the people of their first amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievance, disregard the order. Abstain from service. Or if you are so bold, join us. Make no mistake: The consequences for such decisions are severe. You will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. But sacrifice is your watch word.

Thomas Paine wrote in 1776:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Today we are faced with a new revolution. This time we are fighting to preserve our democracy, rather than to establish a new one. And just as a grateful nation relied upon the Winter Soldier to deliver us from the colonial yoke of oppression, we ask that you aid us in our struggle to be free from the bonds of debt peonage and false representation. In return we will stand in your defense as the elite, who have gained so much from your service, attempt to strip you of your hard won honor.

Reply
7. Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: Forget Pepper Spray—Destroying Protestors Gets Even Easier!

Mother Jones’ Dave Gilson wraps up the best eye-melters around.

There’s the fogger, the backpack sprayer, or, my favorite, PepperBalls, which combine the pain and accuracy of a gun with the chemical potency of ol’ fashioned pepper spray. At this rate of progress, I’m hoping there will be some way to arm Predator drones with capsaicin and just directly crash them into protestors.

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: oh, and here’s the direct Mother Jones link.

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: I think they are going to roll it all out.

I will poke around tonight, that case from 1997 up in Humboldt, a sit-in over logging in a state senator office, where the cops used swabs to directly place the capscasin in the eyes (and I discovered there is film of it being done) I have heard TWO different tellings of how the court case went.

I did hear that the reason the bitch up in Davis is mooning around doing fake apologies is that she got an ear full a nose full a gullet full shoved down her, from alumni.

If wu ming comes around maybe he has heard more about that…

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: Totally predictable… Bratton of LAPD and before that one of the Guiliani men in NYC, will lead the investigation into the Davis pepper spray

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 22 November 2011: Bratton?!?!

Jeebus, why even bother?

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: I know, so horrible.

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: alumni are universally pissed, by most accounts. everyone on facebook except a handful of fascists are unified in their outrage about it all. several drove over from the bay area to the rally, and some have camped. there was a significant alumni and townie contingent at the rally yesterday, walking in from downtown. i saw one of the pepper spray victims walk over towards the tents after the rally, arm in arm with his mom. tonight at dinner i overheard two bleach-blonde tan salon republican women talk about the sprayings in disgust and horror, in between dismissing mitt romney as “basically a democrat, totally useless.”

i don’t see katehi making it to the end of the academic year. she’s losing the university money, and got it bad publicity. the regents will cut their losses and appoint some other privatizer in her stead, is my guess.

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: by “everyone” on facebook i meant “everyone i know who went to UCD or ever lived in davis.” although for all intents and purposes it pretty much is everyone, period.

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: oh, and the physics department just joined the english department calling for katehi’s resignation.

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: oh thanks for that! Yes i know they will put in a terrible person in her stead, but still, she has to go.

Reply
wu ming - 23 November 2011: the more i think about it, that tuition hike may end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back with the student loan bubble, at least in CA. one reason why students are so willing to risk a lot with this round of protests is that a significant % of them will be be forced to drop out of school next year if the discussed 80%+ tuition hikes ($22,000 by 2015) go into effect. there’s nothing to lose.

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: And look how miserable the state entities are…. not just the Regents proper… but Jerry, running away, out of state. Secret vacations with the eternal wife. (Can you imagine if Ebay’s husband had been present at everything with her? Had she won? What utter busllhiste is being perpetrated)….

The problems have been rising thru the UC system for years… I cringed and hung my head in shame when I heard, I guess more than a year ago, that adjoining states were recruiting students from Cali, simply with the promise that there is space at their institutions to take a prescribe course of study and expect, if you follow the rules of course, to graduate in the proper time. That parents and students are being told to apply at 10 or more campuses in the system, with a fee of course for each.

What bulshit.

People act like the public system in Cali is so fine so great it can charge wht it wants. Good lord, these are at least nominally public institutions. And once upon a time, the UC system of education really did contribute to the wealth of the state.

So fucking foolish.

On a somewhat related issue, I am sorry for Jean Quan, not as a person as an individual, but in the whole of the story… esp when the contrast is Don Perata (where to begin with that mess)… but the signs were there in summer. The murder rate mounted … late summer I think it was and she just stayed in China, supposedly thre for a trade trip.

ALL of these peoople are failing and failing badly. And it is obvious they don’t care how public is the fail. Too big an ego to fail? I guess so!

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 23 November 2011: but of course they’ll be stuck with the loans they have up until they drop out, and no diploma to go with it.

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: So many tragedies. And love how certain mouthpieces are decrying the state of the loan system NOW. When people who borrowed 30K are in debt for 150K… one story I heard of a doctor (now a family practitioner, not making a ton), now the bill is 530K…. when she borrowed less than a quarter of that….

After it went full bore for years.

All political alliances.

Reply
ms_xeno - 23 November 2011: The state “iMatch” system helpfully sent me a job offer yesterday: Ride in the back of a UPS truck or some shit like that, helping the drive throw 70 lb packages of crap onto people’s doorsteps.

8.50 per hr. No bennies, no permanence, no nothing.

This is after you spend hours putting your job history and personal info info into their stupid system, so you can get your big fat dole check once a week. Then maybe if you’re lucky every six months they insult you with some shit like this. Then you have to explain why you won’t take it or they threaten to shut off the spigot again.

Fuckers. The other day I saw a job listing on CL that I’m unqualified for because the employee demands that you live within 1/2 hour of the office. Which ought to be an illegal demand, if you ask me, but never mind.

This State is run by self-indulgent, overprivileged, lazy fucks and if they all dried up blew away tomorrow, the world would be a better place.

Reply
8. ms_xeno - 22 November 2011: Labor Must Choose Between Occupy And The Democrats

(via PDX indymedia)

Reply
marisacat - 22 November 2011: So many of them keep saying they won’t be such a reliable resource in elections… then the leadership just falls in line, year after year.

Thanks for the link…

Reply
Madman in the Marketplace - 23 November 2011: they’ll eventually have to replace leadership, if they’re serious.

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: Something has GOT to give.

I saw the note that was handed to Slob at the NH rally, by the Occupy hecklers. It takes it right to him. And I think I saw an accummulation # of arrests for civil dispbedience, protest, camping etc on the note of “4000″. Called on him directly to stop it.

All to the good.

Reply
ms_xeno - 23 November 2011: Or simply ignore them. Don’t vote, don’t donate, don’t give the fucks any legitimacy.

Unless they actually earn it, and that almost never happens.

Reply
9. lucid - 23 November 2011: Though I never made it down to Zucotti, I heard from a good friend that a sizable portion of the library was anti-masonic type conspiracy trash. That’s not to say that there weren’t a lot of good books donated as well, but all the crazies were more than happy to stock the library with nutty fiction.

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: I’ve forgotten what photos I saw were from where, but what I saw on shelf afer shelf was a wide assortment – including the Palin and GWB books as well, just put on the shelves… let people decide.

If Zuccotti Park di have 5,000 volumes, as was reported, there is bound to be junk. Utter junk of all sorts.

An awfull lot of people seem to have no problem that Bloombito and his cops and the Brookfield cops trashed books. Seems to be fine.

Reply
lucid - 23 November 2011: Given the current of anti-intellectualism in this country I think most could care less about book burning….

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: well you know, it’s some fucking sacrilege when Nazis officially do it. But when the Jewish il Duce of NY, in his peach colored three ply cashmere sweater, does it, fine.

It’s the ‘Obama My Leader’ shit. Or, the I Will Follow Him syndrome. From the song.

Reply
BooHooHooMan - 23 November 2011: Frankly, It’s where the Nazi’s went wrong..
with all that , brown, black, and leather and all.
I mean, basically, if they had gone with the peach colored cashmere instead of invading Poland, they’d have been pleasantly gardening in Oxfordshire by the Spring of 194O.
But nooooo, they had to go off on that whole, Kraut,
fashionism thing or whatever…

Reply
lucid - 23 November 2011: Yeah the BDSM attire really turned off everyone…

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: It’s true…they went with th leather queen look.

Reply
marisacat - 23 November 2011: For what it is worth, this is the pic of NYC Zuccotti Park library. Apparently the pics at the Guardian are drawn from a Flickr site that is all pics of the Occupy Libraries. They give the link on th first page of the gallery.

Reply
lucid - 23 November 2011: That Yurt in pic 5 from occupy Toronto is pretty cool…

Reply
10. marisacat - 23 November 2011: New

LINK

………………. 8)

Reply