Occupying Attention

Open Thread

2011-11-17T10:52:00.001-08:00

Running a test to make sure it's possible to leave comments. If anything's on your mind, here's a place to mention it.

Occupy the Macarena? (part one of four)

2011-11-16T16:17:00.001-08:00

Continuing from this post, Occupy Vancouver needs to make it explicit who exactly is authorized to speak in the name of Occupy Vancouver. Why?

Scenario
Early one morning, a flashmob of people appears outside city hall. They proclaim that the Macarena is the official dance of Occupy Vancouver. For those too young to have lived through the Macarena craze or lucky enough to have forgotten it, the flashmobbers offer a demonstration. eh-oh-eh-oh...ahAH. They dance and dance until onlookers turn away in disgust. People in the media blame Occupy Vancouver for this atrocity. Well, is OV to blame? What could OV say in its own defense? What should OV be able to say in its own defense?

First and foremost, OV needs to be able to show reporters quickly and incontrovertibly that it never passed a proposal proclaiming an official dance. It's not enough to point reporters to the minutes of the General Assembly, because the minutes are incomplete and because no one reads the minutes anyhow. All of the proposals ever passed by the GA could be listed on just a few sheets of paper. It would be very nice if someone who isn't me would comb through the minutes and make that list.

The more difficult question is whether the flashmob has any right to speak for Occupy Vancouver. Certainly the Press Committee has the authority to issue statements on behalf of OV -- why not the flashmob? The details of specific cases matter, so I'd like to look at several different variants of this scenario.

Scenario Variant #1: False Flag

The dancers are from an organization calling themselves Occupy the Macarena. None of their members are associated with Occupy Vancouver. They declare that the MAcarena is what Occupy is all about.

OV's Press Committee should be able to immediately deny that the General Assembly has ever endorsed Occupy the Macarena. If the GA really wanted to make itself clear, it could pass a proposal explicitly denying any connection to them, or outright condemning them.

This Variant #1 is not hypothetical, as I know from personal experience. On Saturday Oct. 29, the Occupy Vancouver General Assembly had to speak out against an organization calling itself Occupy the Vatican which was threatening to invade a Catholic Church on Sunday and disrupt their services. The media was calling that planned attack an Occupy Vancouver initiative, and reporter Bill Good was asking whether all downtown churches of all denominations needed police protection. When I heard this I flipped out. I honestly wasn't sure if it was true that Occupy Vancouver was planning to interfere with other people's freedom of assembly. I'd been with OV for almost a week at that point -- if I didn't know, how could Bill Good have been expected to know?

It was 5PM, when I heard this. By 8PM I was co-sponsoring a proposal reiterating that the Occupy VancouverGA has never endorsed interrupting religious services. (Yann, if you're reading this, thanks for being the laid-back point man) There was instant consensus. I haven't done much for Occupy Vancouver, but I'm glad to have done that. What happened next was a big surprise: the First Nations elders charged onstage. Their anger at Occupy the Vatican shifted consensus to outright condemnation of Occupy the Vatican, but that's a story for another time.

Conclusion: we need to make it clear that Occupy Vancouver is not connected to any group with Occupy in its name unless the General Assembly has decided to establish a connection. Even where we are in solidarity with another group (e.g. Occupy Oakland) we cannot take credit or responsibility for what they do if our General Assembly was not aware of it and in consensus support of it.

Scenario Variant #2

Some of the dancers are associated with Occupy Vancouver, and they claim to be members of the Occupy the Macarena Committee

to be continued...

Identity must come before solidarity

2011-11-15T13:24:00.001-08:00

This is the first in a series of posts about what went wrong with Occupy Vancouver and what went right.

One thing that went wrong: it was often unclear which actions were being taken in the name of Occupy Vancouver. The Occupy the Vatican false-flag incident made it apparent just how serious the problem was. It remains a problem -- what exactly is the Direct Action Committee authorized to do?

Who is Occupy Vancouver? How is it related to Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Oakland? Occupiers say they are linked by solidarity, and that seems correct.

Solidarity is awesome. The Occupy movement was and is remarkable for its emphasis on solidarity. Immediately after Occupy Wall Street began, hundreds of like-minded groups sprang up in major cities around the world. It seemed absurd that they each declared themselves in solidarity with the Arab Spring protesters in Tunisia and Egypt, but after the Occupy Oakland camp was tear-gassed by the police I saw pictures of Egyptians holding signs expressing solidarity with the Californians. A hundred people in tents is an unusual annoyance to one city's municipal government, but a hundred or a thousand people camped out in major cities across North America is the beginning of a political earthquake. Ultimately there is no hope for democracy without solidarity.

However, something was overlooked in setting up Occupy Vancouver. No one can say "we are in solidarity with you" without having figured out what "we" means. Who is in solidarity? What actions will we take to express solidarity? Identity has to come first. We can only express solidarity if we first know our identity.*

Who speaks for Occupy Vancouver? Answer: the General Assembly that meets every night on the north side of the Art gallery at 7 PM. That assembly is the voice of the consensus of Occupy Vancouver. For better or for worse, Occupy Vancouver is fully responsible for every decision made by the GA, and for every action initiated by the GA. Occupy Vancouver is in solidarity with Occupy Oakland, but it is not responsible for what they do unless OO explicitly sought and obtained consensus from OV's General Assembly that OV will support their actions.

The most urgent identity crisis facing Occupy Vancouver is the status of committees. Most of the stuff that actually happens at Occupy Vancouver happens because of decisions made at committee meetings. The problem is that I'm quite sure that many of the various committees at OV have not been explicitly authorized by the General Assembly. I've gone over the minutes, and even some important committees seem to be getting their authority from the tacit recognition of the GA, not from explicit deliniation of powers and responsibilities. The Direct Action committee

Does explicit authorization really matter? I have an argument that it does...more shortly...

* Not quite true. We often discover who we are in loving relationships with others. However, a relationship where one person has no sense of his own identity is not a healthy one.

Chauri Chaura

2011-11-12T11:30:00.001-08:00

I've had to back away from Occupy Vancouver altogether. Two reasons:

- OV has not succeeded in defining who they are such that they can define who speaks in the name of the General Assembly. For example, there is a direct action committee which plans events without consulting the GA. "Direct Action" could mean almost anything, including Black Bloc tactics. I toyed with drafting proposals defining their authority, but I know they would never pass.

- OV can no longer be described as nonviolent. Below the fold, scenes from a Nov. 7 confrontation with the police. I have a long post coming about that. Short version: if mass organised screaming is considered proper procedure, the group needs to take responsibility for members who lash out violently.

In 1922, Chauri Chaura was the site of a massacre of British policemen by Indian citizens during the struggle for independence. "Gandhi felt that he had acted too hastily in encouraging people to revolt against the British Raj without sufficiently emphasizing the importance of ahimsa (non-violence) and without adequately training the people to exercise restraint in the face of attack," and therefore suspended the Non-cooperation Movement.

I'm with Gandhi -- I can't participate in a group which is purportedly engaging in non-violent resistance but which lacks the discipline and training required to remain non-violent.

Uses and abuses of MIC CHECK!

2011-11-11T00:37:00.001-08:00

It continues to amaze me that it's possible to run a meeting of over 100 people by consensus, without an agenda or formal leadership. One of the tricks that makes this possible is the bellowed phrase MIC CHECK! It was designed as a cure for cross-talk. If two people in a general assembly are talking over one another, or if several conversations are happening at once, someone who wants to see order restored will shout MIC CHECK. All assembled who want to see order restored echo, shouting MIC CHECK in unison. It's not aggressively pointing fingers at anyone for derailing, it's just loudly proclaiming that there is consensus that the assembly would like to get things back on track. The shouting creates in its aftermath a silence into which one quiet voice can be heard.

It disturbs me to see this technique being used to silence others. Globe and Mail columnist Rod Mickleburgh reported that Occupy Vancouver protesters used it to disrupt a mayoral debate on Monday. Merely by shouting the magic words “Mic check,” protesters felt they could interrupt debate at will. I now know “what democracy looks like,” as some in the crowd chanted. It looks like someone yelling in my ear.

Silencing everyone except the person whose turn it is to speak is necessary for direct-democracy. Selectively silencing people with whom we disagree is thuggish, especially when it's done as an invasion of a meeting organized by others.

Two police officers bitten at nonviolent protest

2011-11-10T23:49:00.000-08:00

An organization committed to nonviolence should never need to deal with headlines like this: Occupy Vancouver protesters bite cops

Below the fold:

- what happened (with start-to-finish video of the confrontation)

- what nonviolence means

- what nonviolence requires
- what nonviolence requires of me

What happened:

The idea of lighting a sacred fire was not approved by the general assembly. It's disturbing that the General Assembly does not seem to be in control of the site. It's not clear to me that the Elders made a proposal to the GA, or that they thought they needed to make one. From the minutes, I know that it was proposed that OV disburse funds to the Elders to pay for firewood, but that this proposal did not achieve consensus.

Lighting this garbage can fire was...inflamatory. The main challenge to OV's right to exist has been bylaw infractions. It is much harder for OV to be shut down if it is clear that the site is not a health and safety hazard. The sacred fire was in violation of a preexisting understanding with the VFD that fires were not to be permitted onsite. The fire was set in such a way that there was little risk of spread (in an oil drum, on sand, far from anything combustible), but I don't think the VFD had been given the chance to confirm this. Once lit, the fire was putting out enough smoke to present something of a choking hazard (my theory is that the fire was not getting enough oxygen). Under the circumstances, I'd say extinguishing the fire was a legitimate restriction on religious freedom, and something the VFD was duty-bound to do.

I was not present, but I've seen video (below). Protesters formed a linked-arm ring to keep the firefighters away. Protesters screamed at VPD officers as they tried to break through the ring. Given the need to break through, the police response seems to have been professional and minimally violent -- I have nothing negative to say about it. Somewhere in the scuffle, someone got bitey.

What Nonviolence Means

It's not enough not to throw the first punch. Nonviolence means renouncing violence even in self defense. If attacked unjustly, it exposes the thuggishness of the attacker and demonstrates moral superiority.

What Nonviolence Requires

Nonviolence is unnatural. It requires great discipline. It is particularly difficult for Occupy Vancouver because the movement is inclusive toward mentally unstable people. Resistance needs to be permeated with a spirit of nonaggression if the most unstable members are going to remain nonviolent. If everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs then someone will lash out. This is predictable, and Occupy Vancouver is responsible for it.

If OV were serious about nonviolence they would need to run drills. The art of holding on to each other without wrestling takes practice. The art of remaining silent when attacked takes training.

What Nonviolence Requires of Me

See this post.

Below, video of the violent confrontation.

Tent Cities: they're common, they can work and they are justified

2011-11-10T11:50:00.001-08:00

Occupy camps were intended to protest inequality, but they veryquickly turned into tent cities for the homeless. In that respect therewas nothing unique about the Occupy camps, because tent cities are alreadycommon in North America. Here's a link to a series of news stories documentingthe situation.*

I don't think it's correct to say that tent dwellers are homeless.I've seen what happens to street people who move into tents. They feel pride,and a sense of community. Having a place that's yours (even if it's just atent) means having a home, and that's a huge step up from sleeping in sheltersor out in the rain.

Occupy Vancouver is an unusually well organized tent city. It has a tentlibrary, tent places of worship, a tea tent, a medical tent staffed 24/7 by volunteers and a tent community kitchen.It has a municipal government (the general assembly) which the communityrecognizes as having authority to pass bylaws, and it has a volunteer securityforce charged with keeping the peace. The OV tent city is a tent city, and I hope that moreNorth American tent cities come to have similar institutions.

Question: do tent cities have a right to exist?

I think tent city dwellers have some rights to the land they'reencamped on, and some right to govern themselves rather than fall under thejurisdiction of a hostile neighboring municipality. I'll need to thinkmore about that, but for the moment I'll just drop this strong reading ofLocke's 2nd Treatise, section 36:

Supposing a man, or family in the state they were at firstpeopling of the world...let him plant in some in-land, vacant places ofAmerica, we shall find that the possessions he could make himself...would notbe very large, nor, even to this day, prejudice the rest of mankind, or givethem reason to complain, or think themselves injured by this man'sencroachment.

But of course we are not in the state of nature, because the inventionof money, and the tacit agreement of men to put value on it, introduced (byconsent) larger possessions, and the right to them. Because we all agree that ourfinancial system is just, municipalities and absentee landlords have the rightto use force to ensure that their vacant, neglected property remains vacant andneglected.

* I comment on metafilter as justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow, incase you were wondering why my post here looks a lot like some comments there

Should I stay away?

2011-11-06T01:10:00.000-07:00

I burned out. Too much writing, too much standing out in the cold. The occupation was ruining my health. Taking a few days off was a choice that was good for the soul.

Unfortunately I may not be going back.

A woman died at the Art Gallery site from a drug overdose. I don't believe I'd met the woman. Her name may have been Ashley, though it has not yet been released by to the media. I hope she died knowing that she was surrounded by people who respected her. I've heard that heroin overdose is a quick and painless way to go, and I hope it was gentle for her.

It bears mentioning that 125 people died of overdoses in the Downtown East Side last year.

Mayor Robinson is using this death as a pretext to close the camp. "I have directed the city manager to expedite the appropriate steps to end the encampment as soon as possible with a safe resolution being absolutely critical to that." His rival Suzanne Anton is living in a similar fantasy land. There is no peaceful way to end the encampment. Even if the protesters are nonviolent as they have sworn they will be, there is no nonviolent way to remove a person who will not budge. At the very least, police will need to grab and drag them.

Being something of a coward, I'm a bit afraid to go back to the site. Robertson is scaring away moderates from the site, leaving behind the more radical hardcores who will make trouble for him. He's made this election issue louder, not made it go away. Well done, sir.

We shall all be heard, someday

2011-10-31T00:44:00.000-07:00

We are onthis patch of dirt for a reason,

But thepoint is not to hold on to this patch of dirt.

The point isto hold on.

We shallovercome, someday.

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,

We shall overcome, someday.