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Why “Fuck the Police?”
Occupy Oakland's Tactical Action Committee hosts a weekly Fuck the Police march on Saturdays at 7:00 p.m.
Any time a civilian population identifies a problem and starts a protest, the police department (the Arab Spring for example), the movement has moved into successful revolutionary actions.
The Fuck the Police March needs both militant and non-violent participation with each person fully respecting the St. Paul Principles, i.e. diversity of tactics with separation of time and place. The police department has acted extremely violently towards protestors in the commons area of Oakland, refusing First Amendment rights to assembly and protest, targeting and snatching particular participants, planting evidence, conflating charges, etc.
The weekly protest will only grow and the more participation we have the more people will see how abusive the police really are, along with spending a blank check of resources while closing libraries, schools, and laying off massive numbers of city employees.
We march in solidarity with Tahrir Square, who advise us to give the police twice as much as they give us. Remember the concussion grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, as well as the kidnapping of innocent participants in Occupy Oakland and the poor and color communities at large, and stealing possessions and resources while destroying and refusing to return them including sleeping bags, medical supplies, children’s toys, food, transportation, clothing, and more.
And finally, the native community is enraged by the theft of the vigil tipi and refusal to give it back much less explain where it was taken to.
The Fuck the Police march is held weekly on Saturday nights, 7 p.m. rally at Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland, march at 9 p.m. Each march has a list of tactical parameters that are called for by the march organizers. These parameters need to be read and understood fully before participating and the rules must be respected. If you cannot respect the rules and parameters this is not the march for you. It is meant to be a thorn in the police paw, it may have militant break away actions, and may not necessarily be what is traditionally known as a “peaceful protest.”
It is a solidarity building, community building and trust building exercise. Other US Occupy groups have begun to march or are planning marches in solidarity including Seattle, LA, Davis, San Jose, and Philadelphia.
The Fuck the Police March needs both militant and non-violent participation with each person fully respecting the St. Paul Principles, i.e. diversity of tactics with separation of time and place. The police department has acted extremely violently towards protestors in the commons area of Oakland, refusing First Amendment rights to assembly and protest, targeting and snatching particular participants, planting evidence, conflating charges, etc.
The weekly protest will only grow and the more participation we have the more people will see how abusive the police really are, along with spending a blank check of resources while closing libraries, schools, and laying off massive numbers of city employees.
We march in solidarity with Tahrir Square, who advise us to give the police twice as much as they give us. Remember the concussion grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, as well as the kidnapping of innocent participants in Occupy Oakland and the poor and color communities at large, and stealing possessions and resources while destroying and refusing to return them including sleeping bags, medical supplies, children’s toys, food, transportation, clothing, and more.
And finally, the native community is enraged by the theft of the vigil tipi and refusal to give it back much less explain where it was taken to.
The Fuck the Police march is held weekly on Saturday nights, 7 p.m. rally at Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland, march at 9 p.m. Each march has a list of tactical parameters that are called for by the march organizers. These parameters need to be read and understood fully before participating and the rules must be respected. If you cannot respect the rules and parameters this is not the march for you. It is meant to be a thorn in the police paw, it may have militant break away actions, and may not necessarily be what is traditionally known as a “peaceful protest.”
It is a solidarity building, community building and trust building exercise. Other US Occupy groups have begun to march or are planning marches in solidarity including Seattle, LA, Davis, San Jose, and Philadelphia.
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This is the invitation to the event, including tactical parameters.
Read them, know them, respect them. See you Saturday.
Read them, know them, respect them. See you Saturday.
For more information:
http://www.facebook.com/events/30219331315...
Are these demos getting progressively bigger, or smaller?
The reasons you offer for what you're doing seem sound. But I can't help but be reminded of a sarcastic review of The Who's Grand Finale Tour in a punk rock zine in the 1980's which noted that this Final Farewell Tour would no doubt soon be followed by a Who's Big Reunion Tour -- which indeed it was. This is now starting to look like that.
If all you've got to offer is a recurring march in the streets of Oakland reminding everybody that you still hate the pigs, then an absolute law (pun intended) of steeply diminishing returns has probably already gone into effect. Are your actions intended to help engender a new mass movement, a society-wide movement, of huge numbers of exploited and dispossessed people? Or it this just a marshmallows and weenie-roast for the all-protest-ghetto-all-the-time subcultural social set? If having lots of demos -- indeed, thematically repetitive ones at that -- was adequate to destroying capitalist social relations we'd all be living in a free society by now.
The reasons you offer for what you're doing seem sound. But I can't help but be reminded of a sarcastic review of The Who's Grand Finale Tour in a punk rock zine in the 1980's which noted that this Final Farewell Tour would no doubt soon be followed by a Who's Big Reunion Tour -- which indeed it was. This is now starting to look like that.
If all you've got to offer is a recurring march in the streets of Oakland reminding everybody that you still hate the pigs, then an absolute law (pun intended) of steeply diminishing returns has probably already gone into effect. Are your actions intended to help engender a new mass movement, a society-wide movement, of huge numbers of exploited and dispossessed people? Or it this just a marshmallows and weenie-roast for the all-protest-ghetto-all-the-time subcultural social set? If having lots of demos -- indeed, thematically repetitive ones at that -- was adequate to destroying capitalist social relations we'd all be living in a free society by now.
Keating, you're so obvious.
Nothing to say, and no words to say it with -- plus-ca-change..
And, are these demos getting progressively bigger, or smaller?
Only strength prevails. Let us not be weak and push 2 twice as hard as the police as Egypt suggests.
Viva La Revolution!
Viva La Revolution!
Be a little more proactive. That means be the change you want to see and in time through hard work and dedication you will see the end result.
Long Live the OAKLAND COMMUNE!
Long Live the OAKLAND COMMUNE!
"Nothing to say, and no words to say it with"
Okay, how about this:
Nothing new to say and the same old words to say nothing with. It doesn't matter what actions he blathers on about, Keating's analysis always ends the same way: you're not doing it right. Mention of a "subcultural ghetto" and some "scenesters" and that's all he needs. You can always tell it's him because of the same useless vocabulary. If Keating wanted people to discuss ideas, he should communicate at least one. Sometime. Anytime. What's that you say Keating? Oh, that failed fare strike and the failed anti-yuppie campaign? Any ideas about anything in the past decade? I thought not. Loser.
Okay, how about this:
Nothing new to say and the same old words to say nothing with. It doesn't matter what actions he blathers on about, Keating's analysis always ends the same way: you're not doing it right. Mention of a "subcultural ghetto" and some "scenesters" and that's all he needs. You can always tell it's him because of the same useless vocabulary. If Keating wanted people to discuss ideas, he should communicate at least one. Sometime. Anytime. What's that you say Keating? Oh, that failed fare strike and the failed anti-yuppie campaign? Any ideas about anything in the past decade? I thought not. Loser.
And this ongoing event is supposed to be an expression of "successful revolutionary actions"? Are morea nd more mainstream people getting involved and swelling your ranks? Is this expanding, or contracting?
It looks from the outside like you have fallen into a form of rote activity with this. If what you are doing isn't expanding, and especially if it isn't expanding into actual everyday life activities of mainstream working people, then it isn't going anywhere.
I'm always up for debate with intellectually and politically engaged grown-ups, not an anonymous coward without balls like "Slim." Which one of my retinue of online remoras is this, anyway?
It looks from the outside like you have fallen into a form of rote activity with this. If what you are doing isn't expanding, and especially if it isn't expanding into actual everyday life activities of mainstream working people, then it isn't going anywhere.
I'm always up for debate with intellectually and politically engaged grown-ups, not an anonymous coward without balls like "Slim." Which one of my retinue of online remoras is this, anyway?
Is this action part of Occupy Oakland. Has OO endorsed it?
In response to JB, resistance doesn't have to be an effective recruiting tool to be viable. People standing up to the 1%, and those who protect and engender them (the police), isn't about appealing to the masses, but is about freedom and dignity.
Occupy offers an unprecendeted opportunity for an expansion of opposition to the existing state of things, and some actions might have more of a tendency to spread and take off than others. This point is crucial. As can be seen from todays' (always wretched) SF Bay Guardian, the corporate liberals are getting ramped up to turn this into a work-within-the-system trip. Let's head 'em off at the pass!
Here's a clear and infuriating example of the jumbo-scale difference between:
1. The new opportunities for mass, mainstream working class-oriented action, presented by the emergence of Occupy,
2. And the total neglect of and indifference to these opportunities in the rituals of the same-old, same-old, leftist demo culture.
From the article critically analyzing the Nov. 2nd attempt at a General Strike in Oakland, in the most recent issue of 'Slingshot,' #108:
"...Before the strike, the call for a city-wide walkout was not publicized in an even minimally adequate way. On the Saturday night before the Wednesday strike we had a march to the Oakland City Jail with a thousand people chanting anti-cop slogans. Two nights later I walked the length of Telegraph Avenue, one of Oakland's main streets, from the center of downtown Oakland to the Berkeley border, a distance of several miles, and saw a total of less than two dozen handbills slapped up in a desultory manner, and these mostly along a short stretch in the semi-hipsterized/gentrified Temescal District. My guess is that this paucity of propaganda applied equally to other main thoroughfares as well. So, what's that mean? A thousand people showed up for an entertaining, lightweight, low calorie episode of anti-pig posturing, but not one fiftieth of that number had the authentic dedication and commitment to form crews with paint brushes and buckets of wallpaper paste, or with tape guns, and cover the length of the main streets of Oakland with posters and flyers, with visible public propaganda calling attention to an action that had to strike most mainstream contemporary U.S. working people as a wholly unusual, exotic and foreign idea..."
"..
1. The new opportunities for mass, mainstream working class-oriented action, presented by the emergence of Occupy,
2. And the total neglect of and indifference to these opportunities in the rituals of the same-old, same-old, leftist demo culture.
From the article critically analyzing the Nov. 2nd attempt at a General Strike in Oakland, in the most recent issue of 'Slingshot,' #108:
"...Before the strike, the call for a city-wide walkout was not publicized in an even minimally adequate way. On the Saturday night before the Wednesday strike we had a march to the Oakland City Jail with a thousand people chanting anti-cop slogans. Two nights later I walked the length of Telegraph Avenue, one of Oakland's main streets, from the center of downtown Oakland to the Berkeley border, a distance of several miles, and saw a total of less than two dozen handbills slapped up in a desultory manner, and these mostly along a short stretch in the semi-hipsterized/gentrified Temescal District. My guess is that this paucity of propaganda applied equally to other main thoroughfares as well. So, what's that mean? A thousand people showed up for an entertaining, lightweight, low calorie episode of anti-pig posturing, but not one fiftieth of that number had the authentic dedication and commitment to form crews with paint brushes and buckets of wallpaper paste, or with tape guns, and cover the length of the main streets of Oakland with posters and flyers, with visible public propaganda calling attention to an action that had to strike most mainstream contemporary U.S. working people as a wholly unusual, exotic and foreign idea..."
"..
Keating, don't you know that quoting yourself is both unseemly and the sign of intellectual vacuity? You become more pathetic the more you try to make your irrelevant ideas seem intriguing. Take your marbles and leave the game already.
Here's what's in store for the direction of Occupy if something more aggressive, inventive and insightful doesn't begin to rear its lovely head:
http://sfbayguardian.com/occupyamerica
http://sfbayguardian.com/occupyamerica
The FTP protests are not achieving anything. It isnt growing, it's the same small group doing the same old same old ineffective actions. We have had thousands in the streets multiple times including at 5am other times in the last few months. Why is FTP so small?
Its a distraction burning up people's time and resources. They are unpopular with the general public and most Occupiers over the age of 25. Getting derailed into these street fights is what the 1% wants.
Similarly it's pretty clear the building takeover isn't going to work.
Its a distraction burning up people's time and resources. They are unpopular with the general public and most Occupiers over the age of 25. Getting derailed into these street fights is what the 1% wants.
Similarly it's pretty clear the building takeover isn't going to work.
First, The FTP marches, it should be clarified, are not Oakland occupy, rather, according to their website, they endorse autonomous actions pertaining to the occupation. Second, people standing up to the 1%, and those who protect and engender them (the police), isn't about appealing to the masses. The FTP marches, in and of themselves, are not so much trying to achieve an end result, but are expressions of rage and hostility to oppression. And third, should the FTP rallies stop because they're not recruiting enough fine young volunteers, like the army is doing for instance?
Glad that we are clear that you arent interested in building anything. I am.
Second for all the talk about rage and oppression, Oakland is fucking full of oppressed people and you're tactics and strategies are clearly not attracting them on any significant level.
So yes the FTP marches should stop.
Second for all the talk about rage and oppression, Oakland is fucking full of oppressed people and you're tactics and strategies are clearly not attracting them on any significant level.
So yes the FTP marches should stop.
I am not altogether sure what you mean by "building something," but I assume you mean attracting larger numbers of people, but it's unclear what for, other than your concentration on shutting out others to make it happen. It's interesting that because I emphasize ethos over commercial and appeal, I am accused of not wanting to build "the movement." And you're right, I don't want to help expand a silencing of people you disagree with.
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