Speaker 1: Welcome Dick had Happened Here a podcast about a crumbling
Speaker 1: empire and planting seeds in the spaces between. Here's part
Speaker 1: two of our interview with Vicky Austin while about the
Speaker 1: legacy of Occupy Wall Street. But but you know, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, you know, like that that you know,
Speaker 1: don't get arrested, it's bad. So I think when Occupy
Speaker 1: really started, you know, we were mostly people who had
Speaker 1: been educated by the co optation of the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: which is that it was all non violent and that
Speaker 1: the whole thing was getting arrested, and Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: was like the only voice that made any sense and
Speaker 1: that was what was affective. Blah blah blah blah blah. Um.
Speaker 1: We had all learned that in school, right, We had
Speaker 1: all been trained that like non violence was like the
Speaker 1: only thing that made sense and that worked. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think like those of us who learned about it
Speaker 1: at all in school, which is certainly not everyone, But
Speaker 1: like I think, like like the the experience of occupy
Speaker 1: of like every day just getting beat up by the
Speaker 1: cops every day, like getting attacked, getting arrested. Some people
Speaker 1: got really some people got really nihilistically nonviolent, like some
Speaker 1: people like really dug in and they're like like like
Speaker 1: we're like no, like there is nothing we can do
Speaker 1: except be beaten in the turn of this like real
Speaker 1: masochistic game. But that happens. That still, Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's one. That's one common response. But another thing that
Speaker 1: happened was that people started breaking through that that that ship. People.
Speaker 1: People started on the ground. Like I remember a march,
Speaker 1: you know, early on, you know, the police would attack
Speaker 1: and everyone would sort of like try to de escalate,
Speaker 1: and people would try to like you know, like like
Speaker 1: talk to the cops or whatever. And like by November
Speaker 1: when right before the camps got cleared, I remember being
Speaker 1: on a march where we stole all of their orange
Speaker 1: betting we're using and you're just holding it over our
Speaker 1: head at large and like trapping cops in it. So
Speaker 1: like even in New York where things never gotten that intense,
Speaker 1: um like in some ways in terms of direct action
Speaker 1: like that lesson on the ground, like you have to
Speaker 1: be you have to be very ideologically committed to get
Speaker 1: hit with the baton three times and still think the
Speaker 1: police are on your side. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: like really you have to really be drinking the kool aid,
Speaker 1: and some people are like some people really they do
Speaker 1: want to believe that. But I think, um, I think
Speaker 1: that was one. So during occupy, like those of us
Speaker 1: who hated the police were pretty lonely even though the
Speaker 1: police were beating us up. But by the end of occupy,
Speaker 1: the seeds had really been sown for a lot of
Speaker 1: generational understanding of the police that didn't necessarily immediately so
Speaker 1: fruit like it wasn't immediately obvious, but I think, like,
Speaker 1: I think like folks who stayed in struggle from there
Speaker 1: grew more and more anti police. Yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: in general, that was well, okay, so my mystres was
Speaker 1: less with occupying more with like the two dozen thirteen
Speaker 1: stuff in Turkey, But it like that that was because
Speaker 1: I was brought up in that, like the sort of
Speaker 1: like foe Gandhian like yeah, MLK Civilisipians, and then it
Speaker 1: was like like I watched Turkey happened and it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's my friend just like getting his ribs broken by
Speaker 1: a cop, and then like there's RaBaD and you know,
Speaker 1: and it were bas sort of where with the Egyptian
Speaker 1: movement dies and they were bad. They just you know,
Speaker 1: they bring out the machine guns and they just shoot everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at a certain point, like you know, this is
Speaker 1: the limited non violence, right is that what happens if
Speaker 1: they to shoot you and and Gandhi? You know, if
Speaker 1: what if you ever want to like go down to
Speaker 1: the Gandhi rabbit hole, like Gandhi like writes this letter
Speaker 1: to like like the Jews of Germany where he's telling
Speaker 1: them to like throw themselves on the blades of the Nazis,
Speaker 1: and it's like this, it's it's this is this is
Speaker 1: like yeah, it sucks. This is ridiculous, like just this
Speaker 1: is like it's being complacent for abuse. Um Anyonedow Studios
Speaker 1: has a really good video on why non violence helps
Speaker 1: the state um and how basically activists that try to
Speaker 1: force other you know, demonstrators to adhere strictly to non violence,
Speaker 1: that's basically that's that's them, and that's them basically saying
Speaker 1: that if like that, that's then endorsing the police beating
Speaker 1: somebody up like like that. Like that's it's it's not
Speaker 1: actually tied to any kind of moving and it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually help like I and we could actually see this
Speaker 1: last year with like the first few weeks of like
Speaker 1: you know, abuse from the state actually making headlines and
Speaker 1: actuated changing people. But after a while it just didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Like a cop could put someone down and pummel their
Speaker 1: face in like August, and like who gives this ship? Nobody,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't it doesn't matter, you know, Like That's
Speaker 1: that's why I found it funny when you talked about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, people getting mad because cops are like macing
Speaker 1: people when they surren into them, And I'm like, if
Speaker 1: that happened, no one, no one would give a ship,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, well, like I think not at all anymore. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think I think part of it is the first
Speaker 1: time that you see it, it's like what on earth?
Speaker 1: It's like this? This is this I think has been
Speaker 1: one of the things that's been the core of the
Speaker 1: whole sort of nineteen like late sort of cycle revolutions
Speaker 1: is that like if you're just like a dude in
Speaker 1: a grocery store and some guy is in is like
Speaker 1: running away from the cops and then like fifteen riot
Speaker 1: cops and just start beating the shot out of them,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that happens like a lot like
Speaker 1: if you just see that, right, there's no way you
Speaker 1: can actually, like like if you ordinary person just witness
Speaker 1: the cops running up and just being the show of someone, like,
Speaker 1: there's no way you can't not be sort of radicalized
Speaker 1: against the police by it. But like, yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: there's a certain point where you hit it. The decentilization
Speaker 1: happens more quickly than what it should. Um, and we
Speaker 1: stopped caring. I agree. I agree with both of you
Speaker 1: that like that, Like both it is shocking and radicalizing
Speaker 1: and we get desensitized because there is so much spectacular
Speaker 1: pressure to naturalize the police and non violence ideology as
Speaker 1: part of that, as part of naturalizing police violence, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do about the police violence. Um,
Speaker 1: So all you can do is control yourself, and therefore
Speaker 1: you should you know, you should be better or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Gandhi had this whole fantasy about, um, the perfect army
Speaker 1: would march unarmed into machine gun fire, um and would
Speaker 1: just be mowed down. It's it's he's a fascist, frankly.
Speaker 1: Um And And yeah, and you only need to look
Speaker 1: at his opinions about black Africans when he was when
Speaker 1: he Africa to see that even if you even if
Speaker 1: you just read like like even if you just read
Speaker 1: like self reliance, it's like this is you know, it's
Speaker 1: not everything I want to talk about with with the
Speaker 1: peace police though, which is that like they're also like
Speaker 1: in terms of like fighting, like inflicting violence on other protesters,
Speaker 1: Like they are the most violent, like of of of
Speaker 1: the factions you've seen in a pro that does happen
Speaker 1: very well, maybe not the most, Like it does happen
Speaker 1: like like they beat people up, Like I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say, like it ties into like protest security, and
Speaker 1: when protest security is usually working with these more like
Speaker 1: peace police type organizers, and then they use protest security
Speaker 1: to literally beat up people who are doing more radical
Speaker 1: action against the state. Um. That happens all the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, protest security. When I see protest security or marshals, UM,
Speaker 1: I know exactly that that the that we're in a
Speaker 1: bad we're in a bad march. Um. The only time
Speaker 1: I've ever been physically assaulted by another protester was during
Speaker 1: Occupy actually um during after the night after we've been evicted, um,
Speaker 1: which is like November fift I think, Um, And if
Speaker 1: people don't remember Obama and the FBI coordinated this nationally.
Speaker 1: All the occupying encampments got swept within a week of
Speaker 1: each other. Um. On that march, Um, we're marching around
Speaker 1: even march arount all night, um, and I'm just dragging
Speaker 1: a trash can into the street because we're being followed
Speaker 1: by police cars, and I'm literally attempting to like do
Speaker 1: some education at the same time. I'm like pulling the
Speaker 1: trash can in the street, and I'm yelling, you know,
Speaker 1: I am doing this because i want to protect us
Speaker 1: from police violence. Like if this is in the street,
Speaker 1: then the cop cars can't catch us as much. That's
Speaker 1: why we build Barakat. I'm like literally trying to like
Speaker 1: yell this because, like, you know, because pulling a trac
Speaker 1: can the streets incredibly and effective ultimately, So it was
Speaker 1: like literally it was literally just like for education purposes
Speaker 1: at that point basically anyway, especially since a lot of
Speaker 1: people would like pull them back out of the street. Whatever.
Speaker 1: This guy runs up on me and grabs me by
Speaker 1: the collar and lifts me up and like threatens me
Speaker 1: with this fucking fist, and he says, if my mom
Speaker 1: can't get to work tomorrow because of you, like I'll
Speaker 1: beat the ship out of it. And we're like we're
Speaker 1: marching in Manhattan and like one am, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the hell are you talking about? And like he would
Speaker 1: have he would have hurt me, like pretty bad if
Speaker 1: a friend of mine had like luckily had my back
Speaker 1: and like de escalated a bit. That's the only time
Speaker 1: I've ever been like physically like brought up, like into
Speaker 1: a fight um with by by another protester. Was was
Speaker 1: a guy insisting that me dragging a trash can into
Speaker 1: the street. It was beyond the pale. But I want
Speaker 1: to just talk a bit more, but like how systematic
Speaker 1: the violence was, like because Okay, so originally I was
Speaker 1: gonna try to get someone from Occupy Oaklands to come
Speaker 1: talk about this, and I talked to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and the biggest thing that I got was that no
Speaker 1: one would talk about it on the record because they
Speaker 1: got because Oakland had Oakland had a blacklist. And if
Speaker 1: if you were inoccupy and like anyone else found out
Speaker 1: about it, like people like people couldn't people spent half
Speaker 1: a decade just not being able to find jobs because
Speaker 1: they they just play black listed at you one and
Speaker 1: like to this day. Like the thing I was told
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I'm I won't talk about this because
Speaker 1: you know, like if if I talk about this, like
Speaker 1: I will be fired, all of my family everyone around
Speaker 1: me will be fired. And there's like I think, like
Speaker 1: this is the everything. But when we talked about sort
Speaker 1: of the collapsive occupy, the the extent to which after
Speaker 1: Obamba in the f ordered the camps closed. The policy
Speaker 1: is that the comps are going to torture anyone who
Speaker 1: attempts to like gather in a place yep, yep. For
Speaker 1: for two years, you couldn't have a meeting outside without
Speaker 1: a police attacking basically, and yeah, um and and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was you know, I think
Speaker 1: like a lot of um, the people who now claim
Speaker 1: that that occupy is the reason that they do politics
Speaker 1: or whatever for Bernie Sanders or whatever. UM, at the
Speaker 1: time they were saying that the reason it collapses because
Speaker 1: there was no UM organization. There was no structure, there
Speaker 1: was no political party, there was no you know whatever,
Speaker 1: there was no demands. And like it's true that it
Speaker 1: was poorly organized, like there's no doubt, UM, but like
Speaker 1: we got beat out of the streets, like we got
Speaker 1: beat out of the streets, and like people tried for
Speaker 1: six months really intensely, and for another six months after
Speaker 1: that less intensely to restart that energy. Um. There was
Speaker 1: all this works forwards, like a general strike on May Day, um,
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, which ended up not really working,
Speaker 1: which is actually exactly the kind of demand filled one
Speaker 1: day of action kind of politics that they were demanding
Speaker 1: actually really failed, which I think is telling. But but
Speaker 1: in the meantime, like you know, like occupy like Zuccati
Speaker 1: got cleared. But for a while, there was the thing
Speaker 1: No one remembers this, I don't think, but there was
Speaker 1: a thing up in um uh Union Square. Um, there
Speaker 1: was an occupation for three weeks. There was like all
Speaker 1: the Union Square freaks um and like a bunch of
Speaker 1: occupiers um. And yeah, the cops just like it was
Speaker 1: just like batons out on site for a few years
Speaker 1: in New York, and I know it was like that
Speaker 1: everywhere else or most everywhere else, and that that came
Speaker 1: down from on high that like the police were just like, oh,
Speaker 1: what was dangerous about this was people gathering in public,
Speaker 1: So we really need to like we really need to
Speaker 1: like enforce the second Amendment being meaningless. Now we really
Speaker 1: need to stop meetings from happening in public. Um. And
Speaker 1: that violence was super intense and super real, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people got beaten out of the movement, you know,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people got really demoralized and left.
Speaker 1: And I understand why. Um. It was scary and awful,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of repression and um, you know,
Speaker 1: and it and it, and it has continued to sort
Speaker 1: of that that kind of repression has continued to escalate. UM.
Speaker 1: But what has successfully happened in our movements, I think,
Speaker 1: to our to our credit, is that we haven't actually
Speaker 1: formed the kinds of hierarchical organizations that allow for more
Speaker 1: effective police repression. All the police have right now against us,
Speaker 1: for the most part is batons in the street. Um.
Speaker 1: They have a lot more trouble infiltrating. UM, a lot
Speaker 1: more trouble, Which doesn't mean they aren't trying like crazy,
Speaker 1: but they have a lot more trouble um, um taking
Speaker 1: down the movements in the in a sort of cointel
Speaker 1: pro way, right. Um. The modes of oppression have changed
Speaker 1: a bit. UM, But that's also because we don't have
Speaker 1: It's a combination of fact that we don't have those
Speaker 1: forms of organization, but we also don't have those forms
Speaker 1: of organization because they don't emerge spontaneously from our living
Speaker 1: conditions like they used to. Um So, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's you can't just give credit to any one thing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different factors that play. I will
Speaker 1: say one of one of the other things that I've noticed,
Speaker 1: and I think, I think, I'm pretty sure this happened
Speaker 1: to talk people are talking about that occupies. It like
Speaker 1: the first thing if you have a group of people
Speaker 1: who are just they're the first thing the cops trying
Speaker 1: to do is a point a leader so that they
Speaker 1: have one person that they can do so and this
Speaker 1: and this lets them sort of this this sort of
Speaker 1: like access point to which they sort of break like
Speaker 1: the demands of the crowd is that they find one
Speaker 1: person they point in the lead and they get that
Speaker 1: person to sort of like be the liaison. My favorite
Speaker 1: Occupied joke, I gotta give respect to Occupied Denver. This
Speaker 1: is the best joke that ever happened. And Occupy they
Speaker 1: announced the beginning of one week on Friday, we are
Speaker 1: going to announce our leader, Occupy Denver has chosen a
Speaker 1: leader and the whole movement got so upset and everyone
Speaker 1: was so angry. I was like, what the fuck? And
Speaker 1: then like they had this like big press conference and
Speaker 1: their leader was a golden retriever. It was like a
Speaker 1: who knows to occupied Denver? Whoever organs that prank? I
Speaker 1: love you, I guess, yeah, speaking thinking of kudos to
Speaker 1: a place. The last thing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: was the giant like port occupation strike thing in Oakland,
Speaker 1: because I mean that that wasn't the first time people
Speaker 1: had done it, Like I know, I know during the
Speaker 1: anti war movements even do like a thousand seven eight,
Speaker 1: there's once people trying to occupy ports. But in Oakland
Speaker 1: they like did it. They really they put like forty
Speaker 1: thousand people like in this in the port of Oakland
Speaker 1: and they shut it down. And I think that was
Speaker 1: like that was one of the things one of the
Speaker 1: stories kind of been lost from this because like you know,
Speaker 1: like that was the point. Like so like I know
Speaker 1: people in Oakland who like they got like drugged repeatedly
Speaker 1: drugged by police informants because particularly Oakland. Also Oakland is
Speaker 1: also way the walk by ok Bood is way way
Speaker 1: less white than any other movements and they get like
Speaker 1: the kind of police oppression they get is like it's
Speaker 1: just like yeah, you know again like people people being
Speaker 1: repeatedly drugged by informants, like cops shooting people in the face,
Speaker 1: like the you know, you have you have the black list,
Speaker 1: you have all this stuff. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: part of it yeah, yeah, And I think part of
Speaker 1: it is because part of it's because it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of non white people and that's you know, that's just
Speaker 1: what happens. But I think another part of it was
Speaker 1: also that there was this fear about Yes, so so
Speaker 1: the reason the poor strike is able to happen is
Speaker 1: because there's sort of there's a complicated game here where
Speaker 1: the people like sort of got involved in in like
Speaker 1: longshoreman union politics. But that sort of like fusion of
Speaker 1: of you have all the people in the street and
Speaker 1: then they start shining down ports and that like like
Speaker 1: the cops like lose their minds over that. Like that
Speaker 1: that I think was like extremely scary to them in
Speaker 1: a lot of wiz Yeah, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: would you know, I would defer to anyone from Oakland
Speaker 1: who was who was there during that you know, I
Speaker 1: have comrades there. I've talked to you have read about
Speaker 1: it since. But you know, I think I think part
Speaker 1: of the heightened police oppression and the heightened power of
Speaker 1: the Oakland occupied Oakland folks was Oscar Grant rebellion. Like
Speaker 1: I mentioned the two thousand nine which had happened, which
Speaker 1: had you know, I have been a few hundred people,
Speaker 1: but it had been really rowdy. They'd been like looting
Speaker 1: and smashing. Um. Maybe maybe more than a few hundred.
Speaker 1: Maybe y're a thousand people on the big on the
Speaker 1: first night. Um. And you also obviously have the legacy
Speaker 1: of the Black Panthers in Oakland, so you know, the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party, you know, forms in Oakland at last
Speaker 1: in Oakland a decade and a half longer than it
Speaker 1: does anywhere else in the country. Um. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like And you also have the really really
Speaker 1: intense touch ocase in the Bay that's happening. So there's
Speaker 1: an incredible political and economic pressure in the Bay combined
Speaker 1: with this history of radicalism that really you know, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think also the other thing that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I think what you said, like you you put your
Speaker 1: you know, you hit the nail on the head, Like
Speaker 1: it was largely like it was terrifying that it was
Speaker 1: the most effective direct action in the occupy movement I
Speaker 1: think was that port shutdown. I think, without a doubt,
Speaker 1: like the biggest mass direct action that that occupy achieved, um,
Speaker 1: was that November twelve. Was that was that with the
Speaker 1: data that I don't remember near the end of the
Speaker 1: near the end of the cycle. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: like the other thing about um about that though, that
Speaker 1: that was very similar to the altar globalization movement, right
Speaker 1: where the unions had sort of teamed up with you know,
Speaker 1: like in Seattle, there's a lot of trade unions on
Speaker 1: the ground next to all the black blocks, right, um.
Speaker 1: And I think like that that image, Um, I think
Speaker 1: really it's really interesting. It really terrified the police, and
Speaker 1: it really it could be it could have been a
Speaker 1: vector for a certain kind of like labor first politics
Speaker 1: that could have emerged. But instead the labor first people
Speaker 1: have turned out to be all electoralists. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: that that's sort of a weird blip that hasn't really returned. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too because like because now like you know,
Speaker 1: like the the the A F l C. I oh,
Speaker 1: just like you know a f l C. A is
Speaker 1: like no cop unions great, And it's like there's this
Speaker 1: there's this sort of like split between the street movements
Speaker 1: and organized labor because they're off doing like electoral stuff
Speaker 1: and like cops ship which is this sort of yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and and have been now for for seven decades,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I mean really like like the
Speaker 1: buying off of the unions and the New Deal, um,
Speaker 1: you know, with some brief you know, with brief windows
Speaker 1: of like wildcat action in the seventies and the nineties. Um,
Speaker 1: the buying off of the unions has has never really
Speaker 1: gone away. Industrial unionism in the US has has long
Speaker 1: been and in and in Europe everywhere where everywhere where
Speaker 1: those developed in the early twenty century, that labor movement, Um,
Speaker 1: they've really been successfully bought off. And I don't think
Speaker 1: there is I don't think that those unions are like
Speaker 1: a big easy route to power anymore than I don't
Speaker 1: I don't like, I don't think they're going to overthrow
Speaker 1: the government. I mean, but I will say, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is my my also my the thing that
Speaker 1: I plug every time is at the A F l
Speaker 1: c I O over through a end a like yeah,
Speaker 1: like like they they they're there are people on the
Speaker 1: ground were like directing like like we're we're directing a
Speaker 1: bunch of the anti Allende stuff. And it's like and
Speaker 1: it was the and it was the Union bureaucracies, like
Speaker 1: more recently in two thousand one, who are in the
Speaker 1: wake of September eleventh, who transformed the anti globalization rhetoric
Speaker 1: into buy American, which it turned out was often buying
Speaker 1: prison made materials. But like that was that was the Union.
Speaker 1: The Union sort of um defanged the defanged alter globalization
Speaker 1: into buy American. And there's there's a thing, like there's
Speaker 1: a whole another story there about how that like how
Speaker 1: anti globalization turned from like you know, the Zapatistas to
Speaker 1: like Trump, which is incredibly depressing, and yeah, goes goes
Speaker 1: through this line of sort of like the replacement of
Speaker 1: internationalism with nationalism and that kind of like by local
Speaker 1: stuff and the fact that like these people sort of
Speaker 1: just decided that you know personally after Seattle part left
Speaker 1: not eleven, they're just like we're not doing direct action again.
Speaker 1: And in Oakland's like Oakland's likes like that that's like,
Speaker 1: that's like the one big exception to that was that moment,
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of just has never happened again.
Speaker 1: And that's partially because that that union that I LW
Speaker 1: is I l W I think out there is on
Speaker 1: the on the boards that was a particularly like radical
Speaker 1: union that had happened in Wildcats like and and was
Speaker 1: like like more democratic than any of the many of
Speaker 1: the other unions and in in those those hips. But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, but that's that's also like a big story
Speaker 1: for another time. Obviously. The connotation of global anti globalization
Speaker 1: over the twenty year period, Yeah, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: out of corny, but like what what can we actually
Speaker 1: learn from what happened there? What went wrong and sort
Speaker 1: of what the limits of it was? Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: the legacy, So I think one legacy that um, the
Speaker 1: legacy that is most widely accepted and known, which we
Speaker 1: can go over quickly, is that it reintroduced class discourse,
Speaker 1: largely into the popular you know then, which is a
Speaker 1: very very bad class politics. But like you know, like um,
Speaker 1: like the you know, it reintroduced some of that sort
Speaker 1: of class war class war discourse and um, and I
Speaker 1: think more important than that, but but not that dissimilar.
Speaker 1: It UM reintroduced UM street politics into the US. UM.
Speaker 1: I think part of the legacy that gets forgotten UM
Speaker 1: because like the general the global nous of the wave
Speaker 1: gets forgotten as well. Like is that when when ship
Speaker 1: pops off in New York, everyone in the world knows,
Speaker 1: or at least they did then, right because America had
Speaker 1: been so successfully you know, appeased politically for so long
Speaker 1: that I think that when occupy popped off UM in
Speaker 1: rather it really like signals to the world, like the
Speaker 1: rest of the world like, oh, like this is real,
Speaker 1: like even in the you know, even in the center
Speaker 1: of empire, like like people are rising up. UM. It's
Speaker 1: hard to remember and it's weird, but like there was
Speaker 1: an occupy in UH New York, in a UK, there
Speaker 1: was one in Tel Aviv. There was actually kind of
Speaker 1: like a pro Palestinian occupy in Tel Aviv briefly UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think maybe the most powerful sort
Speaker 1: of immediate tactical UM offshoot of occupied was occupyed Nigeria UM.
Speaker 1: In the first weeks of UM when President good Luck
Speaker 1: Jonathan UM took took the fuel subsidies away and they
Speaker 1: were like sort of two weeks of really intense revolutionary
Speaker 1: rioting um in in Nigeria that that then called themselves
Speaker 1: Occupy as a way of being legible to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. Um. I think the other legacies though
Speaker 1: that are that are a little more sort of subtle,
Speaker 1: I guess is like that a lot of folks still
Speaker 1: in the struggle now, Like I will still meet people,
Speaker 1: you know, my age, who like I've met I have
Speaker 1: two comrades here in Philly who I didn't know at
Speaker 1: the time, but who were organizing in New York, right,
Speaker 1: Like we probably hung out in rooms together, like we
Speaker 1: probably like we were probably in the same space as
Speaker 1: But like, so like a lot of folks, you know it,
Speaker 1: each of these waves that has come has left, you know,
Speaker 1: some people leave, some people swing right, but like there's
Speaker 1: a residue of folks that like becomes the base for
Speaker 1: the next movement. And I think like Occupy really did
Speaker 1: provide a lot of people in a way that the
Speaker 1: gap between alter globalization and Occupy didn't produce nearly as
Speaker 1: large a contingent of people, although of course there are
Speaker 1: those people. UM. But I think also like really importantly,
Speaker 1: like the tactics of occupy. Like one of the things
Speaker 1: that was incredible about the George Floyd uprising was that
Speaker 1: every tactic that we UM have tried in the last
Speaker 1: ten years re emerged. Right. There was a prison strike,
Speaker 1: there were indigenous blockades, there were me Too style callouts UM,
Speaker 1: which of course developed out of UM punk and queer
Speaker 1: scene call outs that have been going on for a decade.
Speaker 1: But there were occupations, right, you had the chairs in Seattle,
Speaker 1: which we can you know, well, well what we're Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will get to that one day in any case,
Speaker 1: in any case, like I think like that that has
Speaker 1: remained in the repertoire of poltarian struggle, like as a
Speaker 1: result of of occupy and and and if it had
Speaker 1: just been occupied, maybe it wouldn't be as a result
Speaker 1: of the global movement of the squares, which obviously goes
Speaker 1: until Terrier Square and Turkey. I think it's probably the
Speaker 1: Gezi Park in a Turkey UM, which is like the
Speaker 1: last big moment of the squares really UM, but that
Speaker 1: five year wave like it was really really important, UM globally,
Speaker 1: really really important locally as well, UM in terms of
Speaker 1: building activists, building a class of of well I don't
Speaker 1: you know whatever, building revolutionaries whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: the good version of the thing, not the bad version.
Speaker 1: You produced a lot of them, um and um, And
Speaker 1: I think like in terms of its limits and like
Speaker 1: what we can learn from it, Like, I think, I
Speaker 1: think taking the police more seriously it was really important.
Speaker 1: I think taking police violence more seriously was a really
Speaker 1: important legacy of occupy. I think, Um, I think pushing
Speaker 1: towards the limit of what total democracy meant. A lot
Speaker 1: of people and Occupy remember that like a lot of
Speaker 1: Ron Paul people are like weirdo like and the Fed
Speaker 1: cranks and like right wingers like spoken Occupy and like that.
Speaker 1: That that total open populism of of occupy I think
Speaker 1: was both probably its greatest strength and its ultimate limit, right,
Speaker 1: which was that like it was never going to be
Speaker 1: able to really like sharpen itself into the into the knife,
Speaker 1: and it wanted to be to like really change the
Speaker 1: face of global capital or whatever, um because of because
Speaker 1: there were so many white, yeah, middle class and like
Speaker 1: like a bunch of the like a lot of the
Speaker 1: like the current for right media people came out like
Speaker 1: Center Fairbanks was like an Occupy streamer, Simpool Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: welcome for tim Poole. UMO was filming on the last day,
Speaker 1: a bunch of us um doing some things and Timpoole
Speaker 1: did not manage to continue filming, is all I'll say.
Speaker 1: And after that is when he started swinging right, So
Speaker 1: you're welcome over. Um anyway, Sorry, that guy is a
Speaker 1: fucking asshole. He was an asshole then. Though. I think
Speaker 1: what's important to know is that a lot of these
Speaker 1: people were suss as hell back then to occupy folks,
Speaker 1: like they were around and occupy because of the nature
Speaker 1: of occupy, like but like they were, we already didn't
Speaker 1: like them, you know, like a lot of these people
Speaker 1: were already unpopular. We're already disliked in the movement. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, um, but yeah, I think I think so.
Speaker 1: I think you know, there is there there are all
Speaker 1: these different legacies um from it that I think, um, ultimately,
Speaker 1: the legacy things that emerged are much more important than occupy. UM.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, one of the things about it
Speaker 1: was that it really was just like the reemergence of
Speaker 1: street politics, and like like as the re emergence of
Speaker 1: street politics, like it was pretty limited and it was
Speaker 1: not that effective at changing things, um. And also it
Speaker 1: was incredibly effective at leading to those last decades of
Speaker 1: struggle in the US. And I think you can't you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a tendency to want to judge movements
Speaker 1: by the immediate results that they produce, you know. Um
Speaker 1: And like, you know, I think it is this my
Speaker 1: about to quote now, I think I am was it
Speaker 1: like when when he gets asked, you know, what was
Speaker 1: the what was the you know in in the twentieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, he gets asked, like, what
Speaker 1: was the what was the outcome of the Chinese Revolution?
Speaker 1: He says, it's too early to tell, right, Like, I think,
Speaker 1: like that maybe that's I don't remember who that is.
Speaker 1: They were right, Yeah, they were right. They were a
Speaker 1: lot more people died than what we thought. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, they successfully transitioned to capitalism and the
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah it was yeah. So, um, so what was
Speaker 1: the result of occupy? It's too early to tell, um,
Speaker 1: But I think, like I also think, like the things
Speaker 1: that we've talked about here, um were core components of
Speaker 1: what what why? It matters? I do one other kind
Speaker 1: of effect that it's had, And it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to gauge this because I've only been around post occupy,
Speaker 1: but I feel like now when people try to get
Speaker 1: stuff started, they really fall kind of into an occupy
Speaker 1: mindset where they're like, the only way to make this
Speaker 1: successful is to hold this space. And I think that
Speaker 1: is really a default way that even more experience, like
Speaker 1: both experienced organizers and new organizers really kind of keep
Speaker 1: you saying the word default. It's because like that's just
Speaker 1: that's just really like what they go into. You saw
Speaker 1: this in a lot of different cities last year. Really
Speaker 1: they like people trying to set up spaces to hold UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of them did not work, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of them. A lot of them were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying to try to hold the space for like
Speaker 1: an hour, because then the cops pushed us out right,
Speaker 1: and you know, in a place like the chairs they
Speaker 1: got extended out a bit longer that Chad has had
Speaker 1: its own problems um an other cities in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: This happened a city, it happened, and it happened a
Speaker 1: lot of places. I mean, like I think George Floyd
Speaker 1: Square is maybe one of the more honestly successful ones.
Speaker 1: UM for how they were able to actually kind of
Speaker 1: keep police away, and they did they avoided turning it
Speaker 1: into this big media thing like like with the Chaz
Speaker 1: did Um And I don't know, I think I grew
Speaker 1: very I saw a lot of people kind of grow
Speaker 1: kind of frustrated with this like kind of occupy mentality
Speaker 1: because what that kind of results in is people just
Speaker 1: setting up outside of a police headquarters and trying to
Speaker 1: stay there for as long as possible, which is like
Speaker 1: that's not doing anything, You're just kind of waiting to
Speaker 1: get beat up. Um. Yeah. Yeah, but it's complicated though, right,
Speaker 1: Like in defense of that tactic, like I think like
Speaker 1: like that was also very color. That was also very
Speaker 1: core to Ferguson. Right, they held West Florescence for a
Speaker 1: week and a half. Now, they did it much. They
Speaker 1: didn't do it by setting up tents and sitting there. Um.
Speaker 1: And also like you know, like like a thing that
Speaker 1: gets forgotten a lot in the lot in the histories,
Speaker 1: you know, occupy Ice it was pretty small. I was
Speaker 1: big here in Philly, it was it was massive here
Speaker 1: in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So so like there were moments
Speaker 1: when that tactic really does like it's important to have
Speaker 1: a space to meet in. And I think we did
Speaker 1: learn that, but I also agree that it has become
Speaker 1: like any tactic that works once it becomes a fetish, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always trying to balance space because like you know,
Speaker 1: the two big things that have happened the past ten years,
Speaker 1: it's occupying Hong Kong. So people try to balance these
Speaker 1: two kind of almost opposing things like hold this space
Speaker 1: and be water. That's kind of the two things that
Speaker 1: people yell at the street back and forth, and no
Speaker 1: one really knows what to do because it was yelling
Speaker 1: slogans and and and I was I was there saying
Speaker 1: about this. So they're like the one time the people
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong got pinned down when when they had
Speaker 1: to they had this sle versus siege, it was a
Speaker 1: ship show, like you know what I say, Like the
Speaker 1: people in Hong Kong, like you know, okay, like even
Speaker 1: when they're like they they did not have by by
Speaker 1: by the time you're getting to the sort of decision
Speaker 1: of the universities like that, like you know, like they
Speaker 1: had like molot They had like like Molotov workshops, Like
Speaker 1: there were people like standing the roof shooting bows and arrows.
Speaker 1: And cops and it's like it just wasn't enough. And
Speaker 1: I mean and part partially personally, that has to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that, like, you know, Hong Kong is
Speaker 1: in a uniquely bad position insofar as it is one city,
Speaker 1: and it's like the the the only possible way that
Speaker 1: asposment in Hong Kong like ever just doesn't get crushed
Speaker 1: by just the fact that they're outnumbered, like a thousand
Speaker 1: to one is if it spreads. But like yeah, and
Speaker 1: it became this you know, like that that moments like yeah,
Speaker 1: that this that that the whole problem with with friend
Speaker 1: to hold space became really apparently because even if you
Speaker 1: have an extremely large number of people right like like
Speaker 1: attacking one isolated space in mass even think the cops
Speaker 1: are really good at and I think they really bad
Speaker 1: at is trying to deal with like you know, like
Speaker 1: five hundred people, like seven hundred instances of five hundred
Speaker 1: people going through places because it just aren't enough of them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was what was it? Like the head
Speaker 1: of who wasn't it was a big and then national
Speaker 1: least in the National Police, uh you know whatever, um
Speaker 1: said that like we can very easily handle one March
Speaker 1: of ten thousand people, but we can't handle ten marches
Speaker 1: of one. It was and you gotta see this in Chicago,
Speaker 1: feel like this is this is this is how the
Speaker 1: police lost control of of of the miracle miles. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just there's people everywhere for everywhere and yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah I know, And that's and that's
Speaker 1: how that's that's what you know. I mean, certainly in
Speaker 1: Philly where it was, where it was very very powerful.
Speaker 1: That's what the George Floyd rebellion looked like, was with
Speaker 1: people were everywhere in Philly, all the neighborhoods. You know,
Speaker 1: people didn't you know, like we were out there, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, um and like they're like people didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on Free Block South, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Like it was like that, like there was
Speaker 1: just there were fights happening everywhere. And under those conditions,
Speaker 1: the police can't can't, no matter how militarized they are,
Speaker 1: they can't act um effectively. Anyway they can act. They
Speaker 1: certainly will, they will act like pigs um. But but
Speaker 1: I think like, yeah, so I think that that that
Speaker 1: sort of dispersion, But I think the other there's so
Speaker 1: there's I'm going to promote a really really weird no
Speaker 1: crank book right now, but before twenty century, like literary weirdos.
Speaker 1: Guy Uh alias Connetti um Italian wrote this book called
Speaker 1: Crowds and Power, where he attempts to he attempts to
Speaker 1: describe the entirety of human history and anthropology in terms
Speaker 1: of crowds. This is obviously impossible and ridiculous, but that
Speaker 1: book has the best descriptions of crowd dynamics I have
Speaker 1: ever encountered anywhere, And I like, I like people who
Speaker 1: take big swings because they end up they miss. Miss
Speaker 1: has lots of interesting stuff. Um. I think that's why
Speaker 1: people like Settlers by Jason Kai so much. Like I
Speaker 1: think the thesis wasn't great, but there's so much incredible
Speaker 1: stuff in that book that like it works anyway. Um
Speaker 1: that having a really wild thesis allows you to like
Speaker 1: really like get into some Yeah. So anyway, one of
Speaker 1: the things that Connetti talks about in that book is
Speaker 1: that UM a crowd uh an open crowd. As he
Speaker 1: describes it, an open crowd is um must constantly be growing,
Speaker 1: and the moment it stops growing, it starts shrinking. Right
Speaker 1: YEA like this, I think that dynamic UM in terms
Speaker 1: of both movement and like a momentary protest or riot
Speaker 1: right is like really real, I can and I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that UM, particularly organizers are trained
Speaker 1: to do and like that that that we learned to do,
Speaker 1: especially in law periods, and we're like organizing these little
Speaker 1: you know, you know, these little crystallized groups of like
Speaker 1: hard cadre or whatever is that, like you that like
Speaker 1: what we learn as organized is something that is defendable.
Speaker 1: But once you start defending something, you start losing it
Speaker 1: because we cannot take on the state or the police
Speaker 1: in a head on confrontation. UM. And this is this
Speaker 1: can be confusing because sometimes you can successfully defend for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, maybe even a few months. You can
Speaker 1: defend a space sometimes, but once people get really interested
Speaker 1: in the defending, then they begin forming bureaucracies, governments, internal policing,
Speaker 1: security forces, whatever it is. They start becoming the like
Speaker 1: the the They start undermining the very thing that made
Speaker 1: it powerful, which was this sudden rapid growth, this sudden
Speaker 1: like you know, like like big explosion of power and
Speaker 1: self recognition that comes in the beginning of movement. And
Speaker 1: I think I don't think there's a way to will
Speaker 1: that problem away. Like I don't think we can just
Speaker 1: like think our way out of it, like it's just
Speaker 1: a problem. But I do think that like one thing
Speaker 1: that we could take from the experience of occupy and
Speaker 1: the experience the last decade is that like if you do,
Speaker 1: you know, consider yourself someone who wants to participate in
Speaker 1: these kind of movements, which is probably why you're listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast. Um right now, UM, don't try and defend, Like,
Speaker 1: don't try and defend, Like some things will need to
Speaker 1: be defended sometimes obviously, but like if your main thing
Speaker 1: is like the thing, we should never defend something we've
Speaker 1: achieved so far, Um, we should never not be willing
Speaker 1: to destroy it in order to like build something bigger, right,
Speaker 1: Like we should never no movement thing that we have,
Speaker 1: be it an occupy part, be it be it like
Speaker 1: a take in space. Defending that should never outweigh the
Speaker 1: possibility of expanding. And if our strategic mindset obviously moment
Speaker 1: to moment you can't just be thinking that constantly. But
Speaker 1: the strategic mindset is like what we have now is
Speaker 1: only good to the extent that it can turn into
Speaker 1: something more. Um, Rather than we have to defend what
Speaker 1: we have now. If you can think that way, I
Speaker 1: think it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's what has worked over the
Speaker 1: last decade that I've seen is UM, when people attack,
Speaker 1: when people expand, when people try to do try to
Speaker 1: do new stuff. It doesn't always work and it doesn't
Speaker 1: always hold. But that's what When that stuff stops happening,
Speaker 1: the movement is doomed. I think I think that I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good way to wrap things up.
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice, beautiful sentiment. I kind of
Speaker 1: view this type of thing in more than just protests
Speaker 1: and you know, and into different pasts of life. I
Speaker 1: think you can always learn from past experiences, from past struggles,
Speaker 1: but if you try to perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely
Speaker 1: gonna fail. You can, you can always learn and move on,
Speaker 1: but you should not be focused on any kind of replication.
Speaker 1: Is there any of your bookstore writings you'd want to
Speaker 1: plug before we wrap up here? Sure? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I wrote a book that came out last year, UM
Speaker 1: called in Defensive Looting. UM came out UM with bold
Speaker 1: type UM. I am currently also writing Um, I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with movies. I write a movie review um column for
Speaker 1: the Al Jazeera Plus. Um, I did not know news letters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the news letter sub stack. Um, if you want to read,
Speaker 1: I mean it's really it is really movie reviews. So
Speaker 1: if you want, you know, cranky anarchist theory, it's not
Speaker 1: the spot for you. Um. Otherwise, Yeah, I'm I'm on
Speaker 1: a pretty long social media break right now. But good
Speaker 1: for you there. Eventually I'll probably come back inevitably unfortunately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I just have I have writing popping up
Speaker 1: every every now and then, and um, and if you
Speaker 1: read it, I would appreciate it. Well. Yeah, absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and yeah, thank you for so much for
Speaker 1: coming on to talk about, um, occupying stuff that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people hear about, but you know,
Speaker 1: at least all of my generation does not fully kind
Speaker 1: of grasp it. Um. It is. It is literally my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Like I you know, I wasted so much of my
Speaker 1: life thinking about this. I'm so glad to be able
Speaker 1: to share some of it with some people. I'm so
Speaker 1: so glad you're able to join us too. This is
Speaker 1: I've've been looking forward to us for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very excited. All right. That wraps up us today.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter and Instagram, at cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media and Happen Here Pod. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: for a few more episodes this week. Audios. It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. Well
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Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.