Solidarity Sunday – Wear Black Fight Back

Yesterday, Occupy Oakland moved to convert a vacant building into a community center to provide education, medical, and housing services for the 99%. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds and mass arrests. The state has compounded its policy of callous indifference with a ruthless display of violent repression. The Occupy movement will respond, as we have always reponded: with an overwhelming show of collective resistance. Today, we take to the streets. Across the country, we will demonstrate our resolve to overcome repression and continue to build a better world grounded in love and solidarity for one another. All eyes on all Occupies.

SOLIDARITY SUNDAY starts at 7 p.m. EST, Sunday, January 29. Check your local Occupation for convergence points.
Be there.

• NEW YORK Washington Square Park @ 7 p.m. (Events taking place starting at 11 a.m.)
• BOSTON Copley Square @ 7 p.m.
• PHILADELPHIA Love Park @ 7 p.m.

Organizing initiatives are underway in:
WASHINGTON, DC
PITTSBURGH, PA
PORTLAND, OR
CHICAGO, IL
LOS ANGELES, CA
MIAMI, FL
TAMPA, FL
PROVIDENCE, RI
AUSTIN, TX
BUFFALO, NY
ALBANY, NY
YOUR TOWN

This is exactly why I don't eat fast food.

What you're looking at is not a newly discovered pink Burmese python or the material used to make lawn flamingos. It's actually something edible (and I use the term "edible" loosely).

This is actually mechanically separated meat, the main ingredient in many commercial chicken nuggets (and the companies use the term "chicken" loosely). The picture has been circulating around the Internet for a while, but it's still creating buzz because it shows something we rarely see.

It's made by sending animals' bones through a machine that scrapes off the last bits of flesh and blood and smashes them together to form a paste more nausea-inducing than the kind you ate in kindergarten. The paste has to be soaked in ammonia to kill the bacteria, the "chicken" flavor has to be added to it, and the whole mess has to be dyed so that it no longer resembles, well, a big bloody log of unidentifiable animal bits.

Egypt’s Ongoing Uprising

Egyptians rip out the paving stones on their way
to fight the army at the Cabinet building.

 

Rise up! An energetic demonstrator on the shoulders of his comrades riles up hundreds as they advance to the front line. 

A Year of Revolt

One year ago, millions of Egyptians took to the streets and occupied public squares as part of the wave of revolts popularly referred to as the Arab Spring. Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, Egyptians overcame the paralysis of fear and met their oppressors head-on, clashing with the police on National Police Day. The people were dispersed, but confrontations continued in neighborhoods and streets across Egypt, spreading police numbers thin while systematically destroying police infrastructure and readying the masses for the Day of Rage. On January 28, the people of Cairo retook Tahrir square, breaking through police barricades with decentralized marches originating from neighborhoods throughout the city. With the police defeated and withdrawn, neighborhood patrols spontaneously emerged to protect neighborhoods, while Tahrir was transformed into an autonomous zone and tent city. Two weeks later, the streets erupt in joyful celebration as Mubarak surrendered power.

One year later, elections are entering their third round while the military still holds political power. They also hold over 12,000 political prisoners, who are being hastily sentenced in military trials. The streets of Cairo are filled with graffiti and the residue of political protests that became street fights. Walls made of huge concrete slabs block roads where the military and police faced off with protesters only months earlier; the marble sidewalks remain torn up where street militants recently improvised ammunition. Some neighborhood assemblies have transformed into “popular committees in the defense of the revolution,” working on issues ranging from basic services to local governance. Meanwhile, over 100 independent trade unions were formed, breaking the state’s former monopoly on organized labor.

From the Circle As spray painted on the sides of government buildings to the explosion of independent and federated trade unions, anarchist currents can be seen throughout Egypt as its people scramble to win revolutionary change following their great revolutionary moment. But this isn’t the first time that anarchist currents, both implicit and explicit, have been part of Egypt’s political landscape.

Greek anarchists based in Cairo and Alexandria were instrumental in establishing Egypt’s first trade union, the cigarette rollers’ union, in 1899. Italian anarchists were also involved in Egypt’s union movement until the 1950s, but the independent union movement was crushed following the military coup of 1952. The independent trade union movement re-emerged in late 2006, but only really materialized in late 2008. 

Unions played a key role in the success of the uprising of January 25. Starting on February 7, a public transport strike across Greater Cairo, coupled with labor protests along the Suez Canal—along with other industrial actions across the country—helped bring down Mubarak on February 11.

The revolution also led to the birth of the first independent trade union federation in Egypt’s history. Since its founding on the fifth day of the revolution, over 100 independent trade unions, syndicates, and professional associations have been formed, including one for public transport. It has also spurred authorities into dissolving the board of the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which had monopolized the union movement—by law—since 1957. 

But revolutions aren’t just confined to the workplace. While strikes and other industrial actions put economic pressure on the regime, the success Egyptians had in liberating the streets from police control is largely due to another organized group. The “Ultras,” Egypt’s extreme football fans, were some of the most well-prepared and coordinated groups in the marches toward Tahrir. They became the front line in the battle with police to regain access to the square. Organizing via online message boards after one of their own was killed at Tahrir, they came out in force on the Day of Rage. They maintained a strong presence within the square during the occupation, especially at times when the occupiers were most threatened by state and para-state violence. 

Before last January, “Ultras” were regarded as apolitical football hooligans who liked to cause trouble.

However, they were one of the only social groups in Egypt with experience fighting police, and their central role in winning the streets has made their popularity skyrocket. Ultras groups have tens of thousands of members across the Egypt, many of whom identify as anarchists. Although Ultras organizations refuse to be officially placed on the political spectrum, their tactics and modes of organizing are extremely anti-authoritarian. They organize without leaders or hierarchies, refuse financial sponsorships, fight against the commercialization of sport, and live their lives in conflict with state security forces. “All Cops Are Bastards” is a central tenet of the Ultras, and through graffiti and chants they have popularized this slogan in Egyptian society. 

The Ultras were the first to use graffiti to discuss police brutality and freedom of expression, and this attracted supporters and members in the years before the revolution. Today, ACAB is the most common graffiti tag in Cairo and is scrawled on walls in other cities across Egypt as well. The Ultras continue to be a powerful social force giving teeth to the movement, showing up to protests with fireworks, Molotov cocktails, flares, and songs of defiance that have been widely adopted.

Shifting gear: after one of the several confrontations with state security that led
to an officer being taken and stripped of his uniform, a triumphant protester stands in full riot gear. 

The revolutionary movement born out of Tahrir also attracted many who were traditionally excluded from formal political organizing: the millions who survive through direct action and subsist on as little as a dollar a day. The street kids and slum-dwellers that made Tahrir their home stayed there once the party was over. The conditions that led them to revolt had not changed with the fall of a politician, so their occupation continued. Street youth as young as six continue to be some of the bravest and dedicated fighters in this revolution, ripping out the paving stones and running to the front with makeshift shields, keffiyehs, and slings. Egyptian state media dismisses them as thrill-seekers without political motivations, or claim they’ve been paid or forced to fight. But seen dodging live rounds through clouds of tear gas, these young Egyptians bear a striking resemblance to the iconic rock-throwing Palestinian youth that many say inspire them.

In the sprawling expanse of informal neighborhoods surrounding Cairo, self-organization is a means of daily survival. Those without homes build on squatted land or occupy vacant structures. They seize water and electricity when the authorities turn them off, and clash with police when they raid neighborhoods to evict or shut off essential services. Pockets of gated communities inhabited by Cairo’s upper-class fence out the growing excluded class and make visible the intense stratification of wealth in Egyptian society today.

But some of Egypt’s growing underclass, emboldened by the revolution, are going on the offensive. They have begun highly orchestrated waves of occupations targeting empty apartment buildings in more affluent areas. A coordinated takeover of over 2000 housing units in 6th of October City only a few months ago forced a major confrontation with the thousands of soldiers deployed to evict them. The squatters defended their new homes with firearms and Molotov cocktails. Others stormed apartment buildings in Sheikh Zeyad City, occupying flats and demanding permanent housing. These high profile actions are a testament to the growing strength of different communities that organize horizontally and act collectively. 

And it’s not only in the slums. Examining the construction of much of contemporary Cairo, you can tell that informal development has occurred with minimal intervention or assistance from the state, mostly through either the organization of neighboring plot owners or just spontaneous development checked by the intervention and negotiations of neighbors. This has lead to a fairly high functioning system of neighborhoods, albeit with some common problems having to do with planning issues around green space, street widths, and building heights. Still, the outcomes have met a serious set of needs without any real action by government, and definitely display evidence of some planning and cooperation at the local level. 

During the original occupation of Tahrir, neighborhood self-governance again became a necessity. The already minimal functioning of government infrastructure ceased, and plainclothes police even took part in organized looting in attempts to terrify people. Popular neighborhood committees appeared throughout the entire country within the matter of a night. People came down from their apartments to the streets in the midst of a mobile phone and internet blackout and set up checkpoints and communications systems to defend their neighborhoods from police and other anti-social elements. 

Within Tahrir, an autonomous community also emerged. Clinics and logistics tents met the needs of the protesters, while discussion groups, lectures, concerts, a library, a school, and even a regular “Cinema Tahrir” ensured that the square became a space for political education and the forging of deep relationships. Like the Occupy protests it inspired, these initiatives were supported by donations and self-organized by volunteers. Mutual aid and voluntary association became the norm, and the logic of capitalism and power relations faded. But the occupation didn’t come without issues. Thieves and thugs were a persistent problem throughout Tahrir, one that led to the creation of jails and vigilante security and justice systems with varying degrees of respect for human rights. Still, many Egyptian anarchists rightly point out that the occupation of Tahrir and the subsequent Cabinet occupation were successful experiments in anarchy.

 

A tent pops up amidst the burnt-out ruins of Tahrir Square, destroyed by a military invasion only hours earlier. 

A year ago, the exploits of revolutionaries in Egypt turned Tahrir square into a household name. But a few blocks away another occupation shook the foundations of power more recently. People fed up with military rule and disenchanted with elections occupied the entrance to the cabinet building in order to prevent meetings from taking place there and to protest military rule. In the early hours of December 16, this occupation became the latest flashpoint of social war in Egypt. The military kidnapped and seriously beat an occupier, then burnt the entire occupation to the ground, kicking off five straight days of intense street battles. Unlike all the clashes that came before, the people were no longer facing off with the universally despised police forces, but with the army.

People woke up to the news that protesters were under attack and rushed to the scene where a once lively and blossoming tent city had been reduced to fires and rubble in the streets. Rocks were flying through the windows of the cabinet building at the soldiers who had retreated inside, and the numbers in the street continued to grow into the thousands. For the next five days, Tahrir became the convergence point and staging ground for a 24-hour-a-day battle with the military. First-aid clinics opened up and banks closed.

Youth could be seen breaking ATMs and ripping marble off the walls and paving stones out of the ground to use as projectiles. The cabinet building was set on fire repeatedly with Molotov cocktails, while soldiers dropped huge chunks of concrete off the rooftop indiscriminately into the crowds, injuring dozens. At some points, the people seemed to be winning, at others the army looked as if it had the upper hand, but there was no mistaking this for a mere protest; this was full-scale conflict.

Egyptian youth holds up two bullets that the military fired at him and his comrades earlier that day in clashes near Tahrir Square. 

People were pushed back to Tahrir, but even though the military began using live ammunition and lethal force, their first attempt to clear the square failed. As rocks rained on them from every direction, they retreated back to the ruins of the cabinet building. To formalize the stalemate, a huge wall made of concrete slabs was erected, completely blocking the road between Tahrir square and the cabinet. But the fighting simply continued down a different street. The next day, the military succeeded in clearing Tahrir and burning occupation infrastructure to the ground. But new groups arrived to fight them and they were pushed back once again. While the State television was creating conspiracy theories about the protesters and showing child-protesters claiming that they were paid to fight in the streets, the independent media was documenting the abuses, the casualties, and the real reasons behind the conflict. The image of a woman being dragged and beaten by police as they lifted off her niqab to reveal her blue bra eventually led to the end of the street battle. In response to that image and reports of sexual abuse in detention, a women’s march of thousands gathered and decisively pushed back a humiliated army, ending the military confrontation in victory on its fifth day.

As has been the case for the last century, women have been on the front lines of this revolution leading marches and chants, writing and distributing leaflets, fighting police, doing independent media work, and serving in popular committees. Defying the culture of patriarchy that still exists in much of Egyptian society, women shattered sexist stereotypes with their actions and empowered themselves to push the revolution forward in all spheres of daily life.

Some women are now running for the highest levels of government. But like their male counterparts that abandoned the streets for the political process, they are about to realize the bitter truth about “democracy.” As the elections wrap up, it is clear that the winners of Egypt’s so-called “democratization” will be the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. This isn’t exclusively because so many revolutionaries decided to boycott the elections. The Muslim Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice” party had the financial capacity to pay for the big campaign that bought them the votes of many Egyptians. In Egypt as in other capitalist democracies, the axiom one dollar = one vote rings truer than ever. Although economic conditions were a major spark for the uprising a year ago, the MB have the exact same economic policies as their predecessors. So many Egyptians who simply voted for the party with the deepest and longest-running conflict with their previous rulers will have to take it to the streets to topple their government yet again in the near future.

Vote for nobody: graffiti near Tahrir Square
encouraging people to boycott the election. 

Alongside the widespread implicitly anti-authoritarian currents, explicitly anarchist organizing has also been growing throughout Egypt’s ongoing revolutionary process. Individual anarchists have played key roles in the revolution from organizing protests and occupation logistics to doing independent media work. Meanwhile, anarchist conferences and assemblies are also being organized by a growing anarcho-syndicalist organization called the Libertarian Socialist Movement. With members in Cairo and Alexandria and connections to international anarchist networks, the LSM is starting to also attract enemies, entering into conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood and others.

As empowered protesters build organizations, coordinate direct actions, and become increasingly bold in demanding revolutionary change, institutionalized repression continues to rise. People drafted their own trade union law, while the military made laws criminalizing strikes; independent media has risen to new heights of popularity, while the state media has become more blatant in their lies against the protest movement; and people continue to fight authority in the streets, while 12,000 are locked up and denied due process in military tribunals. Egyptian society is experiencing diverging realities. On one hand, people are determined to finish the revolution that sparked a year ago; on the other, elections mask the continuation of state dominance and co-opt the potential of an emerging social order.

Breathless Conclusion: To Be Continued…

The revolution was alive in every moment. The determination of people in the streets to finish what they started last year was matched by the urgency we felt from our comrades to actualize the revolution within broader society. Every moment was an opportunity to seize the future, and everybody knew it.

Before the clashes broke out, we spent every night talking about revolution, analyzing the present and strategizing for the future. I could only imagine that there were thousands more conversations like these happening throughout Egypt. When we said our goodbyes—which we hoped would only be “see you laters”—there was a gravity to the moment. While my new friends may be celebrating victories in the streets and might even win this battle in the long run, some could be killed, injured, or taken prisoner by the military in the days and months to come. The same risks will apply to all of us once we each begin to “fight like an Egyptian.” The pyramids of power weren’t built in a day, and the epic task of dismantling them may take a little while yet, but it is well underway in Egypt.

Further Reading

• Coverage of the December Clashes

• Life in Tahrir

• Ultras in the revolution and at Tahrir

• Revolutionary graffiti in Egypt

Ongoing Coverage

• Occupied Cairo blog

• Egypt Independent

• Tahrir & Beyond blog

• Mosireen.org, Cairo’s independent media center

• Blog of Egyptian anarchist and independent journalist Jano Charbel

A billboard in Cairo International Airport; the same kids they shoot in the streets are glorified in advertisements. Indeed, North American youth can learn a lot from their Egyptian counterparts—but if they begin acting like the youth of Egypt, Obama will likely have them tried as terrorists or else indefinitely detained.



AMERICA OCCUPIES THE CAPITAL

January 17 at 9 am
Capitol Hill
Washington, DC—On January 17 Americans from across the nation and the world will assemble in the shadows of a broken system to participate in real democracy.

At 9 am on the opening day of Congress, Occupy Congress will convene for a day of action against a corrupt political institution. Actions include a multi-occupational General Assembly, teach-ins, an OCCUParty, a pink slip for every congressional “representative” and a march on all three branches of a puppet government that sold our rights and our futures to the 1%.

This is an illegitimate system. Around half of the nation’s population doesn’t participate in electoral politics. More than 6 million Americans who want to vote are disenfranchised, including the entire populace of the District of Columbia. There is consensus that we are on the wrong track and that our “leaders” do not have our interests at heart.

All “elected” officials bought their way into gerrymandered seats with Wall Street money. These bankers’ henchmen have shown themselves both unwilling and unable to take on the tremendous, systemic issues in our country, our place in this world.

In the face of this endemic corruption, the Occupy movement is about organizing locally to discuss and change these problems from the ground up. We came to show the 1%’s Congress what democracy looks like.

Our nation, and our world, is in crisis and our “elected” officials have failed us. They refused to hold their bankrollers—Wall Street—responsible for the financial crimes that bankrupted our nation and destroyed the global economy. This last legislative cycle was the least productive in recorded U.S. history; 90% of the country disapproves of these “elected” officials.

We refuse to accept the grim future that Wall Street’s cronies have designed. We refuse to be the 1%’s captive citizenry. We stand together to show that the 99% are creating a better world.

The 99% will no longer be complacent. Our many voices will be amplified on the steps of Capitol Hill. We shall have a nation by, for, and powered by the people once again. We are building it

2012? Whats at stake in the New Year.

The new year breaks on a turbulent world. Increasingly superfluous, we pour into the service industry—greasing the wheels for consumption rather than producing anything of lasting value—or scavenge at the margins. Forced to be ever more flexible and mobile, competing against ever-broadening swaths of the population for ever more precarious jobs, we aren’t just atomized, we’ve become plasma—a shapeless, reactive mass in which even the most elementary bonds have been broken.

This doesn’t signify the triumph of capitalism, but a new phase of uncertainty for the system as well as its subjects. Today, even liberals acknowledge that 99% of the population has little stake in perpetuating the status quo. Yet only the most doctrinaire Marxists still believe history will deliver us to utopia: maquiladoras on the moon seem equally likely. The current turmoil simply affords us a window of opportunity, a window with no guarantees. If we fail to seize it, the system will stabilize once more, as it has in every previous crisis: and this time we can be sure the stabilizing mechanism will not be the carrot, but the stick.

To summarize an earlier analysis: when it’s easier to overthrow governments than to reform them, we shouldn’t base our strategies on incremental victories, but popularize ways of fighting that create new social bodies. As people lose their previous positions in society, traditional struggles will collapse, but the disenfranchised will pour into every struggle that creates new commons. Yet these commons can only survive as long as they spread: we can only defend ourselves offensively.

These hypotheses were borne out throughout 2011, from the so-called Arab Spring to the fall of the occupations. Here are some of the factors we expect to shape the context of struggle in 2012.

 

Not the Carrot, but the Stick

In the economic crisis, policing and private security are one of the only remaining growth industries. The fierce and apparently coordinated police repression of occupations should come as no surprise in a nation where nearly two and a half million are incarcerated and police kill hundreds every year. That violence is only going to intensify. There’s no other way to keep the superfluous population under control, especially as we get unruly.

We should brace ourselves for increasing levels of force—perhaps beyond anything we can imagine—and countering these in the streets will be essential to the next phase of resistance. But the strategy of the stick means more than tear gas and SWAT team raids. The authorities can’t utilize force without provoking greater unrest unless they delegitimize the targets and break up all social configurations that could fight back. Demonizing insurgents in the media, driving wedges between and within social bodies, and buying off potential allies are all essential steps in this strategy. In this context, implicit offers of immunity to cooperative elements in popular movements are functionally identical to police violence, as they prepare the ground for it. Protesters who seek to distinguish themselves from the irrational and unruly are accepting complicity in everything that is done to the latter.

We can already see how this has played out in various parts of the world over the past year. In Egypt, a widespread popular revolt obtained its original object, but fragmented afterwards as some continued fighting for liberation while others abandoned them to the bullets of the military. In the UK, the disconnection between protest movements and the suffering underclass meant that the inevitable revolt of the latter took an antisocial form, limiting its scope. On the other hand, Occupy Oakland has been able to continue escalating precisely because anarchists and other angry poor people were never successfully marginalized.

 

The Cycle of False Hope

Four years ago, savvy young people eager to change the world lined up behind a politician’s promise of “Hope.” In 2011, many of the same people took to the street; the Occupy Movement was a logical next step for the Obama Generation once electoral politics failed them. We can expect this cycle of hope and disillusionment to continue now that the occupiers’ attempt at autonomous direct democracy has been crushed by force. Faith in leaders was the first to go; faith in nonviolence might be next.

In a time of widespread anxiety and discontent, it’s tempting to throw one’s weight behind anyone who offers to fix the economy and the social ills that supposedly caused its decline. When one promise inevitably fails, the next round of proposals tends to be more extreme. In the coming years, there will be more militancy across the political spectrum and more willingness to act outside the established institutions.

Unfortunately, direct action does not always serve liberating ends. The crucial battle right now is not between illegalism and law and order, but between competing visions of upheaval—and our most dangerous enemies may not be bureaucrats or executives. One of our tasks as anarchists is to unmask would-be leaders and their false promises—the pied pipers of pipe dreams. This is not for the faint of heart: anarchists who lacked the mettle to take an unpopular stand when Obama was elected will be hard-pressed to take on apparently horizontal social movements that ultimately function to stabilize capitalism.

Anarchist principles are catching on throughout society, well beyond the plaza occupations. From the right we hear that “every tea partier is a tea party leader,” and at least some people take this rhetoric seriously. For now, this trend seems simply to be fostering an extra-parliamentary version of two-party politics, with little serious opposition to capitalism on either side. But every moment of disillusionment can also be a moment of transformation. We may find strange bedfellows in 2012.

Higher levels of conflict are going to become increasingly routine . . .

The Taming of the Technological Frontier?

“Not the carrot, but the stick”: we picture security guards with actual nightsticks, but this clampdown will also occur on the newest terrain of struggle, digital communication. The same technology that helped capitalists outflank the resistance of the 1960s has produced new forms of revolt, from file-sharing to viral riots. Without the advance endorsement of Anonymous, for example, Occupy Wall Street might never have gotten off the ground. We can expect to see a worldwide authoritarian backlash against the internet-spread and twitter-savvy revolts of 2011.

Much of this clampdown will take the form of direct surveillance and censorship. We take for granted that those are chiefly employed in places like Syria and Tunisia; in fact, most of the censorship technology those governments use comes from Silicon Valley—and was first applied right here in the US.Since even the slightest internet censorship presupposes effective and exhaustive surveillance, it is a small step from regulation to lockdown.

Yet not all digital repression is as heavy-handed as the firewall around China. Think instead of the digital forensics utilized by police in the UK to follow up on last summer's riots. Alongside this kind of surgical targeting, we can expect yet subtler efforts to delegitimize resistance and guide discourse away from anything that could prove disruptive. The attention economy of Facebook and Youtube is ideal for both approaches.

The current struggles over digital privacy and “free speech” are not just a matter of civil liberties; they will have significant consequences for the next phase of struggle in the streets. The more difficult it becomes to speak freely and safely online, the more specialized the role of circulating information will be, and the more difficult it will become to coordinate revolt spontaneously. The resulting power imbalances may figure strongly in the cooption and neutralization of struggles: in some plaza occupations, the disproportionate power of the media working group has already been a recurring problem. If the clampdown succeeds, this will only get worse.

Keeping up the Fight

Of course, our best defense against the authorities utilizing all the intelligence they gather is not proper computer security, but thriving social movements. When people are used to acting together and discontent is simmering, the powerful are afraid to provoke a storm they can’t control. Again, the best defense is a good offense.

As different groups compete for ownership of the struggle, we should be especially suspicious of every attempt to manage the forms revolt takes. The do-it-yourself ethic that seemed revolutionary in the 1990s ultimately helped solve the crisis of the previous form of capitalism, preparing atomized individuals to self-manage our integration into the economy; self-managing the taming of our own rebellions may well be the next phase of this program. The non-profit post-industrial complex is a familiar example of this: it is essentially a return to feudalism, in which the powerful dole out just enough resources to the well-meaning to keep the population quiet. We expect to see some new examples as social conflict continues. Some of the best managers might be impressively militant.

Today the question isn’t whether there will be resistance—we no longer need to buy plane tickets overseas to get a taste of it—but what social forms will characterize it, what precedents it will set. We’ll probably see heterogeneous zones like Occupy Wall Street open up repeatedly over the coming years, each time drawing in new sectors of the population with diverse perspectives and agendas. These spaces will inevitably rupture as the elements that constituted them form new configurations and new fault lines emerge. Our goal should not be to preserve these for their own sake, then, but rather to make sure the right ruptures occur.

Alongside attempting to intensify explicitly political movements such as the plaza occupations, we should also figure out what role to play in the violent clashes we can expect to see more frequently. Even after a remarkable wave of anti-austerity protests, anarchists in London seemed unprepared for last August’s Tottenham riots. We need to be able to act swiftly and decisively in such moments. We probably won’t succeed in imposing our own political agenda on them; even if we could, it might put us in the ranks of the managers and protest marshals. What we can do is demonstrate in practice how different forms of revolt are relevant to each other, and help to link them together. Looters need hackers, and hackers need looters too.

A Crisis of Legitimacy

Whatever their results, presidential elections are a ritual for reinforcing the legitimacy of the government and its political process. In 2012, this legitimacy is in question to an unusual extent. The popular rhetoric of autonomy and participation is the flipside of a growing skepticism towards our rulers.

Right now this skepticism is mostly expressed in the language of corruption and mismanagement; people doubt the legitimacy of this government, but perhaps not of government itself. For the ruling class, holding that line will be the top priority this year. Our priority will be the opposite.

At the same time, we’ll be facing our own crises. Would-be leaders have always used discourses of legitimacy to isolate their foes—violence versus nonviolence, locals versus outside agitators, goal-oriented discipline versus unproductive chaos. As the false promises become more extreme, so will the recriminations. Pandering to their discourse reinforces their advantage, but declaring ourselves on the side of the illegitimate is not enough to undermine the force of legitimacy itself. How we navigate this complex problem will determine our ability to link different social bodies in revolt.

No matter what, we cannot sit back and let the cycle of hope and disillusionment run its course, however costly those who profit off of false hope make it to intervene. Nothing we say is credible if we fail to provide examples of action to those who are ready to act. An escalating cycle of conflict produces a growing apparatus of control. If we wait until every solution except anarchy has been tried, it will be too late.

. . . and the stakes keep going up.

What is SOPA?

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill introduced into the House of Representatives in October to give law enforcement and copyright holders additional tools to prevent copyright infringement, backing off another bill, PIPA, both seeking to protect corporations from the theft of imaginary property.

How are SOPA and PIPA attacking the Internet?

SOPA section 103 and PIPA section 4 require payment processors and ad networks to shut down accounts if they receive the right kind of letter from a copyright owner — a system modeled on the heavily criticized notice-and-takedown provisions of the current Digital Millenium Copyright Act that requires a service like YouTube to pull down infringing content after the copyright owner complains.

SOPA section 104 offers legal immunity to ISPs that independently block websites that host illegally copied material without any prompting from the government. That's a major conflict of interest for a huge ISP like Comcast, which also owns NBC — there would be nothing stopping Comcast from blocking a foreign video service that competes with NBC if it could claim it had a "reasonable belief" it was "dedicated to the theft of US property." And indeed, Comcast is among the companies that support SOPA.

Now, you may have noticed that while all these rules are totally insane, they're all at least theoretically restricted to foreign sites — defined by SOPA as sites with servers located outside the US. That's important to know: at its simplest level, SOPA is a kneejerk reaction to the fundamental nature of the internet, which was explicitly designed to ignore outmoded and inconvenient concepts like the continuing existence of the United States. Because US copyright holders generally can't drag a foreign web site into US courts to get them to stop stealing and distributing their work, SOPA allows them to go after the ISPs, ad networks, and payment processors that are in the United States. It is a law borne of the blind logic of revenge: the movie studios can't punish the real pirates, so they are attacking the network instead.

How SOPA and PIPA affect YOU?

PIPA

• Force U.S. internet providers to block access to websites deemed as enablers of copyright infringement
• Seek legal action by suing search engines, blog sites, directories, or any site in general to have the black listed sites removed from their website
• Will be able to force advertising services on infringing websites, and those supporting of them, to remove them from their advertising accounts
• Companies will also have the power to sue any new websites that get started after this bill is passed, if they believe that they are not doing a good job of preventing infringement on your website

SOPA

• The U.S. Attorney General can now seek a court order that would force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, servers, and payment processors from having any contact with allegedly infringing websites
• It will allow private corporations to create their own personal hit lists composed of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies, ironically this doesn’t have any odd feelings of a legal mafia at all. These companies will be able to directly contact a website’s payment processors a notice to cut all off payment involvement with the targeted website. This payment processors and website of question will then have five days to act before it is simply taken down.
• Payment processors will have the power to cut off any website they work with, as long as they can provide a strong reason of why they believe this site is violating copyrights

Make Every Day MLK Day by Fighting Injustice-Never Be Silent!

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-01269

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent message is as relevant today as it was during his lifetime. Although this is the day officially set aside each year to pay tribute to his legacy, we can pay tribute to Dr. King every day by opposing discrimination against anyone, including animals. Whenever we speak up against the oppression of animals who are suffering in circuses, in backyards, in laboratories, and on factory farms, we honor his commitment to social justice.

The animal rights movement draws inspiration from—and is an obvious successor to—the civil rights movement. In fact, Dr. King's inspiration for nonviolent action was Mohandas Gandhi, who was an animal advocate and ethical vegetarian, and animal rights issues have been important to Dr. King's family members, including his widow, the late Coretta Scott King, who adopted a vegan diet, as has their son, Dexter Scott King.

Today, and every day, countless opportunities exist to bring about a more just world, whether by volunteering at a local animal shelter or helping underprivileged or elderly neighbors care for their animal companions. But the underlying principle behind Dr. King's teachings about the proper response to injustice is never to be silent.

UNITY DAY!!

Occupy the Courts Nationwide!

How Green ?

If your tofu has turned green, you'll probably want to toss it. But the results of a recent study show that our tofu is so green that it's a cause for celebration!

The findings of this new study reveal how vegan foods, such as veggie dogs, tofu, and seitan, contribute little to climate change compared to meat. For example, only 350 grams of carbon dioxide are released for each kilogram of soy "meat" produced, while an equivalent amount of ground meat is responsible for around 7,200 grams of carbon dioxide. If my math is correct, that means a hamburger patty causes more than 20 times more harmful greenhouse gasses to be released than does a veggie burger of the same size.

We've always said that "meat's not green" because of the severe environmental damage caused by factory farming—which releases massive amounts of the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change.

With a growing focus on our responsibility for maintaining our planet, there's still no better way to go green than by going vegan.

Is Your Diet a Killer—or a Lifesaver?

There are countless things that we can do that endanger our lives, but there's one thing we can do that can not only help us live longer but also save many more lives at the same time: adopting a vegan diet

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Around 16 billion(that's "billion" with a "b") animals are slaughteredeach year to feed Americans, which works out to more than 100 animals per meat-eater in the U.S. But you're smart—you do the math. And then do the smart thing: Go vegan.

2011: A Year in Revolt

2011 will be remembered as a year of revolution, the beginning of the end for an unsustainable global system based on poverty, oppression, and violence. In dozens of countries across the Arab world, people rose up against broken economies and oppressive regimes, toppling dictators and inspiring the world to action. Popular rejection of austerity measures and attacks on worker's rights brought millions to the streets in Greece, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK, Chile, Wisconsin and elsewhere.

By midsummer, murmurs of "occupying Wall Street” were stirring online, and on July 14th, we registered the domain occupywallst.org and began organizing. The first New York City General Assembly was held August 2nd and the Occupation of Liberty Square began on September 17th.
Fueled by anger at the growing disparities between rich and poor, frustrated by government policies that benefit a tiny elite at the expense of the majority, and tired of the establishment’s failure to address fundamental economic inequalities, OWS offered a new solution. We built a People’s Kitchen to feed thousands, opened a People’s Library, created safer spaces, and provided free shelter, bedding, medical care, and other necessities to anyone who needed them. While cynics demanded we elect leaders and make demands on politicians, we were busy creating alternatives to those very institutions. A revolution has been set in motion, and we cannot be stopped.

As the mainstream media ignored us, we learned from other leaderless resistance movements in places like Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran to use social media and live video streaming to spread our message. We are part of a global movement that has radically democratized how information is created and shared, rendering centralized, corporate-funded mainstream media increasingly irrelevant. The rapid exchange of information allowed us to make collective decisions quickly, discuss information and ideas across the globe, mobilize effective direct actions, and document police brutality. Now more than ever, when we chant “The Whole World Is Watching!” it is not an idle threat.

Today, tens of thousands of everyday people are putting ideals like solidarity, mutual aid, anti-oppression, autonomy, and direct democracy into practice. Individuals are joining together in city-wide General Assemblies and autonomous affinity groups. Through consensual, non-hierarchical and participatory self-governance, we are literally laying the framework for a new world by building it here and now -- and it works.

The rest is history. In honor of a new year, here is a run-down of what we accomplished since then. It would be impossible to list every action or mention every place an Occupation has occurred. But let us start a new year by celebrating a few highlights of our victories -- along with a sneak preview of what's to come!

Nightmares of capitalism, Pipe dreams of democracy

The crisis continues. This isn’t just a hiccup in the market, but a structural breakdown. A system driven by competition for ever-increasing profit can’t run indefinitely; sooner or later everything that can be commodified has been drawn into the market, all the capital accumulates in a few hands, and the profits dry up.

Today the factories of every industry produce commodities more and more efficiently via automation that renders workers increasingly redundant. The only way to profit on these commodities is to cut costs: to eliminate workers or pay them next to nothing. But without work or wages, people can’t play their part as consumers. The only job openings are with the police, who wage a never-ending war on the population to control the poor and unemployed. This is why our world is overflowing with cheap shit, with human life cheapest of all.
As commodities get cheaper and consumers get poorer, how can capitalists continue making a profit? Credit was invented as a way for consumers to go on shopping even when they weren’t paid living wages. When the sale of real goods can no longer produce profit, profits must be made on expected future returns—in other words, on speculation.
But like any house of cards, debt can’t be built up forever—eventually someone calls it in. The house of cards collapsed under its own weight in 2008 when it became clear that the expected future returns could never materialize. Rather than reconsidering their faith in capitalism, the authorities are now gutting the last vestiges of the support structures established to pacify the old labor movement, feeding every last stick into the fire.



The financial crisis signals a deeper metaphysical crisis: this system, which perpetuated itself by creating unfulfillable emotional needs, cannot provide for the global population’s material needs either. The high rates of unemployment from Egypt to the US are not simply caused by the corruption of despots like Mubarak, nor the greed of specific capitalists; they are evidence that a system that never worked for us is on the verge of ceasing to work at all.

In response, some hope to resurrect social democracy. But wasn’t it social democracy that neutralized the resistance movements of the 20th century, while building up a state powerful enough to impose the current inequalities? Democracy has always been the guardian of capitalism, giving the greatest possible number of people reason to invest themselves in hierarchies and coercive institutions, equating freedom with property rights. If capitalism is doomed, we need something altogether different—the truth is, we always did.

Capitalism won’t crumble overnight. Its rituals and values are so deeply ingrained in us that its demise could take generations, and it might give way to something even worse. If we want to have any influence over what comes next, we have to pose the right questions with the ways we fight and the narratives we propagate. Here we’ll trace the trajectory of popular struggles against austerity and capitalism around the world across 2010 and 2011, identifying their limitations so as to push further next time.

 

Happy New Years OWS!