Recognizing “Protest Theater” Facades
at #No2Napolitano and Beyond,
Or:
“I’m giving you a choice: Either put
on these glasses...
...or start eating that trash can.”
(Forward: If you haven't watched the 1988 movie "They Live!" yet, do so ASAP. If you've seen it, but haven't watched it since your involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement [especially the encampment raids]: watch it again.)
On Thursday, February 13th 2014, there was a protest against the appointment of former head of the Dept. of
Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, to the position of President of the
University of California system. The
demonstration was held UC Berkeley, or Cal, long recognized and mythologized as
the pinnacle and exemplar of sustained college student activism for the past
half century, yet the around 500 people who attended comprised the largest political rally on campus
since the dwindling days of Occupy Cal, two
years earlier. Our collective
showed up in solidarity and support of the #No2Napolitano actions as the last
active working group of the once thousands strong movement at Occupy Cal, now
under the banners of CalOpenU.org and bpOffCampus.org. While the vast majority of demonstrators were
righteously fired up against Napolitano for her inhumane deportation record,
splitting up millions of families, we passed out copies of a small quarter-sheet
flyer to widen the scope and awareness of Napolitano’s presidency of just one
visible symptom of a vast cancer eating away at the world’s largest Public University.
The flyer read:
#No2Napolitano
- Ax the corrupt and undemocratic UC board of Regents
- Reject the fascist DHS takeover of the UC by “Big Sister” Napolitano
- Get BP off campus and stop the privatization of public education
- Throw cops (UCPD) off campus and stop the militarization of public universities
- Hold accountable the fraudulent activists within UAW 2865 for moderating radical movements
Well, this is going to take more than a 30 second sound bite
to explain…
Put on these glasses...
It’s not widely known why, even by its
members, the United Auto Workers represents over
13,000 graduate student workers in the UC system. I’ve written extensively [Long Version / Short Version] on how in the Fall
of 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement finally manifested itself at UC
Berkeley as Occupy Cal, UAW graduate student “activists/organizers” placed
themselves in key leadership positions (in a “leaderless” movement, mind you)
to moderate the thousands of students, faculty, and community members’ populist
outrage against incredible tuition hikes, increasing privatization and
corporatization of the UC, and the despicable administration and police tactics
to brutalize the peaceful activists; to moderate and divert this mass movement
fueled by righteous indignation into strategies to elect better Democrats
locally and nationally with the (false) hope that they could fix our problems
from within the system.
As stated, UC Berkeley is known
internationally for its radical student protests, and even the prior two years
(2009-2010) there was a series of building occupations against increasing
tuition and privatization. So when
thousands mobilized at Occupy Cal for direct action, there was a palpable
disappointment when the General Assemblies (GAs) went nowhere slowly, the
Original Facilitation Committee (which was always stacked with UAW members)
stalled/rejected any kind of building occupation votes with their
super-minority block and deceptive parliamentary procedure tricks, and
ultimately, after a week, they undemocratically told everyone to go home and
reassemble three months later when they (the UAW) were ready for a mass action
(as if we weren’t “ready” right then).
On Front Groups: Alphabet Soup, shell games, and who’s pulling
whose strings. (Or: a brief as possible
history of ratfucking [sabotaging/double-crossing] political movements at UC
Berkeley 2011 - 2014)
It’s important to note that this
cabal of organizers never explicitly represented themselves as UAW organizers, for
if they did, cracks would form in the façade and begin to reveal the
motivations and connections the United Auto Workers union has, in a top-down
feudalistic pyramid scheme, to the Democratic Party. They have supported the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) unquestionably with their dollars and union dues (one of the
biggest financial contributors of the Party in the past decades), and in the
past 30-40 years, if a DNC leader says “Jump!” the UAW asks “How high?” So when the UAW faction usurped the
democratic GA process during the first couple of weeks of Occupy Cal, they
called themselves the Public Education Coalition (PEC) to avoid this connection
and to keep their motives clouded. After
their powers at Occupy Cal were severely limited when the Facilitation
Committee’s rules were overhauled, the UAW sect quietly disappeared and formed
“Occupy Education” which was the 1st incarnation of the “99%
Spring”. The 99% Spring was formed after
it was clear that the Occupy Wall Street movement couldn’t be co-opted into
rallies to #ElectBetterDemocrats and the Dept. of Homeland Security
(Napolitano’s old job!) coordinated police attacks on Occupy encampments all
across the country, brutalizing and arresting thousands. The 99% Spring was rose from those ashes to
pretend to be a parallel movement to Occupy, but it was spearheaded by the
Labor Unions that were intrinsically connected to the DNC… like the UAW.
How the 99% Spring manifested
itself at the University of California was with “Occupy Education”, led by UAW
grad students, with all meetings held at the local UAW hall. Again, they pretended to be sympathetic and
parallel to Occupy Cal (half a mile away) but they diverted populist student
energy off campus to one
rally and “Protest Theater” (more on this term later) at the State Capitol at
Sacramento. By all accounts (that aren’t
duplicitously rose-tinted), this March 5th 2012 “Day of Action” was
a complete disaster/farce with all students going home with no objectives won,
while a few smiling DNC politicians made speeches full of hollow promises and a
few union organizers put a feather in their cap for their personal “activist/organizer”
resumes.
With the Occupy movement essential
over at UC Berkeley (despite a handful of dedicated activists) the UAW sect
changed from Occupy Education to a new political party on campus Students for a
Democratic University and tried to use Occupy Cal’s brand & previous
accomplishments into campaigning and electing some of them into the Cal Student
Government (the ASUC). They won exactly zero
seats. The SDU existed for the next year-plus;
basically as an outlet/front for new eager earnest students to get connected to
activism on campus, go to a couple of long boring meetings with no rallies or
actions on the horizon, and then decide that student activism wasn’t for them
(and never be seen again). These past
two years have been the LEAST active at UC Berkeley since the 1950s. Then, in Fall of 2013, Janet Napolitano was
appointed the new President of the University of California, and a new populist
movement fell into the lap of the UAW sect… to take over and ratfuck.
It is worth noting that our working
groups/collectives (@CalOpenU and @bpOffCampus) were far from dormant in the two
years since the decline of Occupy Cal: we were extremely busy with our limited
resources, researching, holding public teach-outs about Public Education,
privatization, the Regents, BP; we networked with other groups around the Bay
Area, attending many environmental rallies about Climate Change and Fossil Fuels;
we had direct actions, staged guerrilla theater actions on campus and more. All this time, we held out the olive branch
to the UAW faction (and their minions) on campus, inviting them to work with
us, hoping that we could bury the hatchet, work past our differences for the
betterment of all activism at UC Berkeley.
All of these attempts were roundly rejected by this UAW sect. They shunned anyone who even associated with
us and defriended people on Facebook who promoted our events.
So when Napolitano was appointed,
without being asked the UAW jumped to the front of the growing movement against
her, now calling themselves the Coalition for Public Education (CPE). They called a public meeting to
“democratically” decide how to say “No 2 Napolitano”. Incredibly (except to those of us paying
attention the past two years) the UAW/CPE managed to pull off what they did
against Occupy Cal over the course of months (insidiously transform a
horizontal, democratic populist movement into a one day rally for the UAW, a
top-down organization that only pays lip-service to the movement ideals) in
under an hour. At the meeting with
UAW-stacked facilitators and plants in the audience, they patiently listened to
this fresh crop of eager student activists, and then called for a vote (“Wait,
what? Who said we were voting on anything?”) to make the first action of the
“anti-Napolitano”-CPE into a one day “strike” for AFSCME(representing campus
workers)/UAW grad school student workers.
Needless to say, there weren’t any more #No2Napolitano
actions of merit last semester. Which
brings us to the planning meeting for protesting Janet Napolitano’s visit to
campus on February 13th 2014; The UAW sect again jumped to a
leadership role by default (of course, unelected), and the group now called
themselves the Students of Color Solidarity Coalition. For those of you at home
keeping score, the UAW 2865 front groups since Fall 2011: PEC (Public Education
Coalition), Occupy Cal OFC (Original Facilitaion Committee), Occupy Education,
SDU, CPE (Coalition For Public Education) and now... the SCSC.
Various students group who showed
up to this public planning meeting were told there was no time for
announcements, and this was not a space to plug separate affinity groups. Almost immediately after everyone settled in,
the meeting turned into a video presentation, plugging/promoting the UAW
organizers, and a call for support for a potential UAW/AFSCME “5 day
strike”. When people asked what the
UAW/AFSCME strike had to do with #No2Napolitano, they were hissed at, and
denounced as disruptors. So members of
the CalOpenU collective waited for the “discussion period” at the end of the
presentation to voice their concerns.
But they were not “allowed” this opportunity to do so publicly, as one
of the night’s organizers kept asking them to leave, and he’d answer their
questions outside of the meeting space.
When they refused, saying they’d prefer to address this situation
publicly, a member of the UAW/#No2Napolitano organizing faction publicly, in
front of many witnesses, called CalOpenU “cops”.
On
Snitchjacketing:
Ever since
some of us began questioning Occupy Education’s political role in co-opting
Occupy Cal in February 2012, we’ve endured all kinds of attacks on our
character: baseless mudslinging, defamation, accusations of embezzlement,
disinformation etc: I must emphasize, this has been entirely one-sided. Whatever political attacks we’ve made in the
public sphere against this UAW sect, they’ve been just that: political, not
personal. In the article’s I’ve wrote
(or even in my social media feeds), I’ve NEVER ONCE named a single name. Instead of writing a rebuttal to my damning
article, the UAW used their Big Labor influence to pressure my publisher,
Truth-Out.org to censor the article, removing it from the site. They’ve quietly let leak even more
disinformation; take this [paraphrased] exchange I had with a student activist
at UC Berkeley in the 80s: “Hey, did you ever read my article?”--- “No, I
haven’t. Is that the one where you call people in the UAW cops?”
There
is a HUGE
difference between pointing out that Unions like the UAW and AFSCME are
intrinsically connected to the Police State, and saying that certain members
within the union are cops! One is
examining how in the UAW has donated millions for the Obama against their own
working class’ interests; that UAW dues help elect the President who appointed
the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet
Napolitano who was responsible for more deportations, more broken up families
than any other president in US history; that AFSCME as a union represents over
60,000 prison guards across the United States, therefore they support the
Prison Industrial Complex, the School to Prison Pipeline, and inhumane laws
that keep undocumented immigrants in cages longer; yes there is a difference
between pointing out the inconvenient
truths of Big Labor’s ties to the Police State in the US in 2014 (which
is what I did), and calling individual activists cops, which is what the
UAW/#No2Napolitano organizing faction did to us, making them snitchjacketers.
Snitchjacketing: “When a member of an organization is set up
to appear to be an informer or a cop in order to get that person killed or to
instigate some organizational disruption or split. This counter-intelligence
tactic was carried out by the FBI COINTELPRO program against members of radical
political organization such as the Black Panther Party.” Without naming the specific individual in
question, let me point out this wasn’t a naïve 19 year old student yelling out
in the heat of the moment without knowing any better: this comes from someone who
has been organizing around Occupy Oakland (which had its own infamous case of
snitchjacketing), and the Bay Area for years, and damn well knows
snitchjacketing is extremely dangerous.
Onto February 13th
2014, the day of the #No2Napolitano protests:
I
arrived at the Sutjada Dal Hall (SD Hall) at 10am; just in time to see some UC
administration top brass in their Sunday best to meet with Napolitano sneak in
the back “Trash Only” exit of the building to avoid another student immigration
rights group protesting out in front. I
tried to follow the admins in, but I was hassled by the UCPD, as apparently the
public wasn’t allowed in that “Trash Only” exit due to a rule they made up on
the spot. I waited for the main rally of
the day begin at 1pm on Sproul Plaza, taking a role of observer and dialoguing
with anyone who wanted to engage on the prospect of this rally being usurped
and turned into a UAW/AFSCME publicity stunt.
The
rally began with genuine, contagious energy that had around 500 student protests,
a majority of them people of color picketing in a circle around Upper Sproul
Plaza, chanting “Hey Hey! Ho Ho!
Napolitano has got to go!” As
someone who has been to a fair share of dud demonstrations on campus in the
past couple of years, it was really nice to see students finally fired up about
something again. Then the speeches
began…
---There really ought to be a DeCal
(a nontraditional set of classes taught at Cal) on How to Protest: The first
topic would be “Basic Bullhorn Use 101”.
In my years of activism, I’d say a good two-thirds of people grabbing a
megaphone were partially to totally inept in how to use this relatively old
piece of technology. People can seem to
grasp the idea that even though a bullhorn amplifies your voice, you still have
to project your voice; you still have to speak clearly. Otherwise people can’t hear you beyond ten
feet.
The organizers of the rally brought
for the two worst bullhorns I’ve ever come across in my life that could still
be technically called “bullhorns”. This
isn’t hyperbole: I’ve seen traffic cones be put to better use.
So the amassed crowd listened to a
tinny bullhorn project long winded speeches that couldn’t be heard more than 10
feet out. The previously charged up
crowd began to dwindle.
#ProTip for the ~97% of
people gathered at #No2Napolitano who fervently, genuinely want this monster
dismissed as UC President: If you are going to use a bullhorn, don’t read from
a document, SPEAK FROM YOUR FUCKING HEART!!!
If you have a document in hand, fucking bullet point it and pass the
mike. This isn’t the 1950s, where random
people off the streets gather to hear the news from a leader on a soapbox:
People attending protest rallies in 2014 are generally well informed on the
political subjects at hand. Unless you
are Joe or Josephine Charisma (and you probably aren’t), your more than 120
second speech at the bullhorn is hurting the energy and momentum of the
action. This isn’t about you. (And no, in 1963, it wasn’t about Mario Savio
either, even though the damn Sproul Steps are named after him.)
After about an hour, the
#No2Napolitano marched deeper into campus, to the Memorial Glade, where we were
treated to… you guessed it: more de-energizing, long winded speeches that only
33% of the crowd could hear. This second
stop was designed so the UAW sect could slip ahead, and “occupy” the Blum
Center building.
On vanguards
“Occupying” the wrong fucking building:
As the
#No2Napolitano march, now down to about 300 people, neared the SD Hall where
Janet was meeting with UC brass, the crowd was led instead to an adjacent
building, the Blum Center for Developing Economies, named after the one of the
sitting UC Regents, Richard Blum (husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein and
otherwise all-around plutocratic asshole) who appointed Napolitano. Let me be clear: with a fired up crowd still
500 strong #No2Napolitano a brave contingent could have easily stormed the SD
Hall where she actually was, stopped the meeting, occupied the building, and
made international news. The 300 tepid
protesters who remained still could have supported the maybe 50 or 60 still
left in the crowd who were willing and eager to take direct action, and could have
stormed SD Hall! This would
have created international headlines, capturing the imagination of a whole new
wave of student activism! The potential
squandered at #No2Napolitano is downright shameful. (This grad student, who isn't part of our collective, nails it in this CounterPunch article) .
Instead
the 300 students, most of them attending their first protest, were docilely led
to watch the UAW vanguard sect occupying the wrong building, raising their
fists in “resistance” behind huge plate glass windows. Many of the 300 outside the building, after
cheering on those 11 people inside (the so-called “Blum 11” … sigh), were eager
to join them in the occupation. “No,
no!” said the leaders outside, “we’re just here to support those inside. “ As the students grew anxious at this turn of
events (and the plan they were not privy to), the leaders to the bullhorns and
gave more long-winded go-nowhere speeches while the Blum 11 paraded inside,
waving to the crowd, using the windowed staircase like a fashion show runway…
but, because, for you know… activism!
While
other members of our collective tried to engage with people in the crowd on a
one on one level, I took a theatrical nap under a tree to symbolically show
that this protest and unending inaudible bullhorn droning wasn’t
just putting me to sleep, but also the Powers That Be who felt absolutely no
threat from this phase of the protest/”occupation”. I was happily woken from my “slumber” when a veteran
activist from another immigrants’ rights coalition used their collective’s bullhorn
(IE functioning) to fire up the crowd with impassioned bullet points against
Napolitano. The spacing and acoustics of
the nearby campus buildings were as such, that if even a marginally competent
person grabbed the megaphone, the message could be heard over 100 yards away,
instead of the 10 feet that was being broadcast to 95% of the time.
 |
| (Look at those faces: "This isn't part of the script!") |
As the crowd got excited again, the #No2Napolitano
“leaders” on the outside quickly announced “They aren’t with us!” and got the
crowd to mic-check chant the other protesting collective into silence… so that
the droning could continue unabated. There
was not any semblance of democratizing the bullhorn, access
was only granted via cronyism. In fact, ANY
dissenting, or even just questioning voices were quickly hissed or shouted down. Some Stalinist bullshit right there…
Those outside eventually dwindled
down to under 50, as there waiting for a “Manifesto” from the “Blum 11” to give
them some reason to remain. For hours
they waited outside, on the concrete, with no thought from any of the organizers
to supply food or water. Eventually a
tub of popcorn and a loaf of bread arrived.
---Really? You ask dozens of
people to turn their direct action activism participation into ground support
for a vanguard, and you can’t shell out $75 to have 10 two-topping Domino’s
pizzas delivered to the protest? (As a
dedicated veteran activist, I consider it my duty to have firm knowledge on
local pizza status/pricing). Finally,
the “Manifesto” was delivered.
On Fake Activism
or “Protest Theater”:
To be
clear, Theatrical Protests are awesome; they have to power to transform the
stagnant reciting of grievances into creative dynamic performances that have
the potential (when done well) to stick with those viewing for far longer than
conventional methods. “Protest Theater”
on the other hand, is a different beast entirely.
Rallies,
demonstrations, marches all serve legitimate functions in protesting: They
raise awareness to (whichever) cause.
But when the rallies and marches are an end to themselves, IE they don’t
create genuine “civil disobedience” where the day to day status quo aren’t
meaningfully disrupted and interrupted; this is the beginning of “Protest
Theater”.
More cynically, “Protest Theater”
is an action or event that claims to create change but the organizers know
beforehand that it is a prefabricated illusion of populist momentum designed to
popularize and legitimize the “Leaders” or organizers of the event on the backs
of (usually unpaid) volunteer labor.
For example, shutting down the Port
of Oakland like Occupy Oakland did on Nov 2nd 2011 was quite a
legitimate protest, with a good numbers of unions working together a mass of
citizenry and activists stop the flow of capital in a “General Strike” the
likes of which hadn’t been seen in this country for 70 years. After then, one union (of many), the SEIU
gradually withdrew from Occupy to be in the 99% Spring (on top-down orders from
the DNC). They chose not to participate
in Occupy Oakland’s call for another General Strike on May Day 2012, and
instead promised a “Wisconsin-style Uprising” the day before on April 30th
at San Francisco’s City Hall. Instead of
Occupying the City Hall, they held a permitted rally where they chanted,
clapped, tepidly sang some old union songs, and when their permitted hour was
up, they quietly left the building. That’s
protest theater.
Protest Theater has insidiously
evolved since, with no better example coming to mind than the environmentalist
group 350 dot Org’s rally at the Chevron station in Richmond CA. Thousands of people, angry at Chevron’s local
pollution disasters, didn’t march to picket the refining station, or block work
shifts from entering or exiting. The
mayor of Richmond and 350 dot org organizers had colluded and preplanned the day’s
events with the Richmond police. Over
200 people lined up in front of the Chevron refinery to wait their turn to
participate in civil disobedience arrest-theater. One by one Richmond cops put zip ties on “protesters”
only to have them removed 5 minutes later, without being cited or booked. But the headlines across the country read “Over
Two Hundred People Arrested at Chevron Refinery” and “Rockefeller-funded
douche-canoe and 350 dot org top pimp” Bill McKibben got to put another feather
in his cap. Gandhi and Martin Luther
King Jr. are rolling over in their graves.
“But isn’t some protest better than
no protest?” It would seem so, on the
elementary mathematics surface, but let’s factor in a few more variables and
advance to at least Pre-Algebra, shall we?
Even a 12 year old can deduce that an act of “Protest Theater” can harm
the larger movement when it draws
attention away from people on the front lines; using the anti-fossil fuel
example, those people risking arrest and severe jail terms for blockading
pipelines (and otherwise actually getting shit done) in Canada and the USA.
From start to finish, the
#No2Napolitano demonstration was “Protest Theater”, designed to draw power away
from eager new student protesters while simultaneously enhancing the activist
profiles of a few select organizers.
Their “Manifesto” can easily be debunked as hogwash. The “Manifesto” has a lot of information on
how the UC Regents are undemocratically appointed, and how Napolitano’s
presidency is illegitimate: but who elected the UAW/”Blum 11”
into leadership positions of #No2Napolitano; how legitimate are their proclamations?
The “Blum 11” were going to occupy the Blum
building, calling for:
1. “UC Berkeley Chancellor Dirks to publicly
renounce Janet Napolitano” = To create the kind of pressure necessary for
Dirks to make such a career killing statement would require a lot more than 11
people in a “occupying” a building that would be vacant over the weekend anyway: those 11 people went to the wrong building
and turned away hundreds of others from joining them.
2. “For all those in solidarity to cancel
classes tomorrow (Friday, Feb 13), and for people to build a strike in support
of Napolitano’s resignation and for the democratization of the University.” This coming from the UAW sect that were among
the Original Facilitation Committee at Occupy Cal in Nov 2011 would be quite
laughable if it weren’t so hypocritical. This sect claimed this kind of student
strike; during the high point of Occupy Cal with thousands amassed and ready;
would take 10 weeks and then an additional month to pull off! But these 60, mostly neophyte, #No2Napolitano
protesters (as earnest as they are) were to scramble and pull off a campus wide
strike in under 16 hours! Riiiiiiiight…
3.
“Full
amnesty for all those reclaiming campus space, including those who have taken
the Blum Center.” = the Golden Parachute/Get Out Jail Free card. The only objective achievable; and the only
one they cared about getting. And the
precedent had been set for this strategy to work when yet even another
Immigrant-Student-Rights group occupied another building on campus late 2012. They also had a large list of
demands that included amnesty for the protesters, and hours later they
un-occupied with only amnesty won. The
veteran activists observing at the time cynically thought “Great! Any group can now take any
building, ask for the moon and the stars, settle for just amnesty, and come
down as radical student activist heroes” Which is what’s happening now with the UAW
sect and their Protest Theater.
By the
way, I’m not just talking out of my ass here when it comes to building
occupations and tactics therein: I was part of an Occupy Cal action in Jan 2012
where we Occupied the Anthropology Library in order to re-staff a dormant
position and to open the library back to its 9-6pm hours instead of the new
12-5pm hours that began that semester.
In a 50 hour occupation, we forced the Administration to meet all of our
demands, and the next day, the library opened its doors at 9am. (A further “by the way”: the UAW/Occupy
Education sect came en masse into our Occupation-In-Progress and tried to vote
it down, telling us to go home. They
failed.)
On "I’m
giving you a choice: Either put on these glasses, or start eating that trash
can."
 |
| "They can see..." |
Seeing
through the façade of “Protest Theater” should be incredibly simple: all it takes
is an open mind, and some basic critical thinking skills. Yet for reasons that are still incredibly
baffling to me, many of my Occupy comrades have this sort of blind allegiance
to Business Unionism that provokes a knee-jerk response that closes their mind
and dulls their otherwise razor sharp critical thinking skills when it comes to
activists critiquing Unions. (From a “leftist”
point of view, mind you; not right wing or libertarian views on why Unions are detrimental
to business bullshit)
So many
radical activists of all stripes (Anarchist/Socialist/Communist, even the Green
Party), especially in Occupy Oakland would (rightfully) denounce Obama and the
DNC at the drop of hat, but when it came to questioning the critical lack of
support from the Unions to Occupy nationwide (that essentially doomed the
movement): you could hear a pin drop.
The Occupy Wall Street movement was picking up the standard and fighting
the good fight against plutocracy and for all workers (not just “skilled labor”)
that the Labor Unions abandoned over 70 years ago. The thing is, the Unions kept all the money to
wage that class war, in the form of dormant strike funds, sitting
billions of unused dollars, while Occupy had to fight unpaid, under-supported,
in the cold. The UAW has over
$800 million in strike funds: take a moment to imagine how just 1% of that
could have been a game-changer for Occupy.
Yet when I point these facts out to certain people and cliques
within the (former) Occupy movement, this stone-faced, blind allegiance comes
up. I don’t personally know what
unbreakable bonds of unity and brotherhood were forged on the picket line
during the (theoretical) six day union strike of 1998 to get 2 extra paid sick
days per year, but whatever happened, it created a free pass on systemic critique
of Business Unionism in the USA to this day. It’s analogous to unquestioning flag waving
patriotism, just trading the stars and stripes for Union colors.
It’s time to dispel the
Business Union illusions, and “Put on the fucking sunglasses!”
Let’s examine the nature of the reactions (good and bad) and
counter-arguments to my accusations of the UAW 2865’s involvement in ratfucking
populist student action since at least 2011 (and perhaps even before then: from 2010 “If you look at the weak (or guaranteed-to-fail) “demands” (and planned action) of the upcoming March 4th education-centered protest on UC campuses…“)
1. Many
former/current Occupy activists around the country have been reaching out to me,
sharing similar experiences with Union organizers trying to divert radical
actions at their local Occupations/GAs; countless examples ranging from constantly
reinforcing the Democrats VS Republicans illusion, to minor things like during
marches, voting to stay on the sidewalk instead of taking the streets.
2. Locally,
mostly silence. Which is understandable,
to a degree, as Occupy Oakland activist faced some of the nastiest infighting
and sectarianism of the entire OWS movement that eventually tore the once
vibrant, most radical wing apart. While
I didn’t explicitly ask people to take sides, by default they were asked to
either claim I was misrepresenting the truth RE the UAW, or to start take
action VS the Unions/99% Spring that ratfucked Occupy around the Bay Area. So many stayed on the fence, silent. (Incredibly, and sadly, I’m the only person
that significantly organized with Occupy Oakland, Occupy Cal and Occupy the
Farm [not a claim I’m particularly proud of, I’d rather have company], although
I constantly implored more people to cross-organize.)
3. Incompetence:
Trying to explain away all of Occupy Cal’s failures, and the weakening of
pitiful activism in the past two years at UC Berkeley on inexperience and incompetence
of student organizers (IE not because of any shadowy UAW Agenda). If this is the case, after nearly 3 years of
total abject movement failures at UCB, why would anyone trust this flock of student
organizers (the UAW sect & their minions), to organize a lemonade stand,
let alone promote them as “leaders of the student movement”?
4. Lack
of Proof? People who weren’t there
saying I can’t prove what I said happened, even after I’ve had multiple witnesses
corroborate the chain of events that I described about Occupy Cal in writing.
5. And,
most bafflingly, people saying that “Yes, there are problems within the UAW
nationally, but there are some radical folks within the local 2865. So, no…” and
the argument trails off there, without any further explanation, or citing any
specific examples that I misrepresented.
This last argument comes from the Reclaim UC collective, who came to
international activist prominence during the Wheeler Hall Occupations and the
student movement against the tuition and privatization from 2009-10. They’ve done excellent reporting and blogging
about the corruption at the UC system for years, even publishing a reportback
from an action our bpoffcampus collective engaged in last spring. But in the instance of my article exposing
UAW’s infiltration of Occupy Cal, the Reclaim UC collective has quietly used
all of their activist cred they’ve built and earned over the years to basically
call me a liar, without offering any further proof, dialogue, or written academic rebuttals. More dismaying is my Occupy comrades,
especially those in a (loosely defined) Wheeler Hall 2009 clique (who have
risen to Activist Organizers Persons of Influence and Trust around the Bay Area
due to their activism/camaraderie 4 years ago), basically take the Reclaim UC
collective’s word over mine, just on their say-so.
I’m not saying anything like everyone
in the UAW are counter-revolutionaries: I’m pointing out the hard truths that a
tiny cabal within the UAW 2865 local, with influential people on the sidelines unquestioningly
championing them, have careerist egotist motives; and furthermore are willingly
useful idiots and pawns of the DHS/DNC plutocracy promoting “Protest Theater”
while stalling any real reform.
“Start eating that
trash can…"
Days in
advance of the #No2Napolitano action, I warned observing activists repeatedly via
social media that this was more than likely going to be “Protest Theater” with
the UAW (/AFSCME) sect trying to take it over to promote an upcoming 5 day strike
over wages, IE nothing to do with Janet Napolitano as a human rights
violator. This was mostly ignored.
Later,
when our collective was called cops by the UAW sect at a public meeting, I
informed people that a cardinal sin of activists was committed:
snitchjacketing. When the Occupy Oakland
Media/Hella Occupy Oakland collective snitchjacketed a member of the media
working group back in 2012, the Occupy Oakland GA, at over 90% vote banned the
4 who wrote the dangerous article from any further official use of OO media,
saying they could never speak on behalf of Occupy Oakland again. Unofficially we as individuals all stopped
promoting Hella Occupy Oakland articles, stopped retweeting their tweets, etc,
effectively shunning them. The message
was clear, if you are, or if you associate with unapologetic snitchjacketers,
we will stop associating with you.
Yet in
the past few days we have a virtually identical situation. The UAW sect of the #No2Napolitano has called
our collective cops at a public meeting for disagreeing with them. They haven’t
acknowledged, apologized or even denied this.
It is extremely dangerous for this behavior to go unchecked by the
activist community! I even
informed a number of activists via social media personally; although any more
than cursory scroll through the #No2Napolitano tag on twitter would inform
people. Many people; who I’ve faced down
riot cops with; chose to ignore this information and precedent and promote the UAW
sect’s Protest Theater of the “Blum 11”!
Dirty Pool comrades, Dirty Pool.
In conclusion, we at CalOpenU/bpOffCampus will continue to
organize against Napolitano, the UC Regents, British Petroleum… the whole damn
rotten corrupt system! We are NOT in it
for personal gains; we aren’t asking for dues, we don’t want you to drink any
fucking Kool-Aid. We want to defeat the
plutocratic bastards, and we think we have the organizational experience and
strategies to better accomplish this. We
are extremely encouraged by the vast majority of the #No2Napolitano protesters,
and dismayed at any and all cabals/sects/cliques that would divert their energy
into dead-end activism. We are always
open to new good ideas and a diversity of voices and we would like to hear from
you!
@bpOffCampus
(Edit/Post Script: After ~24 hours, the Blum 11, reduced to the Blum 7, left the building. No arrests were made.)
(Edit/Post Script: After ~24 hours, the Blum 11, reduced to the Blum 7, left the building. No arrests were made.)
