To Remember Occupy, Part Two

don't get arrested, it's bad. So I think when Occupy really started, you know, we were mostly people who had been educated by the co optation of the civil rights movement, which is that it was all non violent and that the whole thing was getting arrested, and Martin Luther King was like the only voice that made any sense and that was what was affective. Blah blah blah blah blah. Um. We had all learned that in school, right, We had all been trained that like non violence was like the

only thing that made sense and that worked. Um. And I think like those of us who learned about it at all in school, which is certainly not everyone, But like I think, like like the the experience of occupy of like every day just getting beat up by the

cops every day, like getting attacked, getting arrested. Some people got really some people got really nihilistically nonviolent, like some people like really dug in and they're like like like we're like no, like there is nothing we can do except be beaten in the turn of this like real masochistic game. But that happens. That still, Oh yeah, that's that's one. That's one common response. But another thing that happened was that people started breaking through that that that ship. People.

People started on the ground. Like I remember a march, you know, early on, you know, the police would attack and everyone would sort of like try to de escalate, and people would try to like you know, like like talk to the cops or whatever. And like by November when right before the camps got cleared, I remember being on a march where we stole all of their orange betting we're using and you're just holding it over our

head at large and like trapping cops in it. So like even in New York where things never gotten that intense, um like in some ways in terms of direct action like that lesson on the ground, like you have to be you have to be very ideologically committed to get hit with the baton three times and still think the police are on your side. You know, you have to like really you have to really be drinking the kool aid, and some people are like some people really they do

want to believe that. But I think, um, I think that was one. So during occupy, like those of us who hated the police were pretty lonely even though the police were beating us up. But by the end of occupy, the seeds had really been sown for a lot of generational understanding of the police that didn't necessarily immediately so fruit like it wasn't immediately obvious, but I think, like, I think like folks who stayed in struggle from there

grew more and more anti police. Yeah, that was that in general, that was well, okay, so my mystres was less with occupying more with like the two dozen thirteen stuff in Turkey, But it like that that was because I was brought up in that, like the sort of like foe Gandhian like yeah, MLK Civilisipians, and then it was like like I watched Turkey happened and it was like, hey, here's my friend just like getting his ribs broken by a cop, and then like there's RaBaD and you know,

and it were bas sort of where with the Egyptian movement dies and they were bad. They just you know, they bring out the machine guns and they just shoot everyone. Yeah, and at a certain point, like you know, this is the limited non violence, right is that what happens if

they to shoot you and and Gandhi? You know, if what if you ever want to like go down to the Gandhi rabbit hole, like Gandhi like writes this letter to like like the Jews of Germany where he's telling them to like throw themselves on the blades of the Nazis, and it's like this, it's it's this is this is like yeah, it sucks. This is ridiculous, like just this

is like it's being complacent for abuse. Um Anyonedow Studios has a really good video on why non violence helps the state um and how basically activists that try to force other you know, demonstrators to adhere strictly to non violence, that's basically that's that's them, and that's them basically saying that if like that, that's then endorsing the police beating

somebody up like like that. Like that's it's it's not actually tied to any kind of moving and it doesn't actually help like I and we could actually see this last year with like the first few weeks of like you know, abuse from the state actually making headlines and actuated changing people. But after a while it just didn't matter. Like a cop could put someone down and pummel their

face in like August, and like who gives this ship? Nobody, Like it doesn't it doesn't matter, you know, Like That's that's why I found it funny when you talked about, like, you know, people getting mad because cops are like macing people when they surren into them, And I'm like, if that happened, no one, no one would give a ship, Like yeah, well, like I think not at all anymore. Yeah, well, I think I think part of it is the first time that you see it, it's like what on earth?

It's like this? This is this I think has been one of the things that's been the core of the whole sort of nineteen like late sort of cycle revolutions is that like if you're just like a dude in a grocery store and some guy is in is like running away from the cops and then like fifteen riot cops and just start beating the shot out of them, which is the thing that happens like a lot like if you just see that, right, there's no way you can actually, like like if you ordinary person just witness

the cops running up and just being the show of someone, like, there's no way you can't not be sort of radicalized against the police by it. But like, yeah, but there's there's a certain point where you hit it. The decentilization happens more quickly than what it should. Um, and we

stopped caring. I agree. I agree with both of you that like that, Like both it is shocking and radicalizing and we get desensitized because there is so much spectacular pressure to naturalize the police and non violence ideology as part of that, as part of naturalizing police violence, right, Like, there's nothing you can do about the police violence. Um, So all you can do is control yourself, and therefore

you should you know, you should be better or whatever. Yeah, Gandhi had this whole fantasy about, um, the perfect army would march unarmed into machine gun fire, um and would just be mowed down. It's it's he's a fascist, frankly.

Um And And yeah, and you only need to look at his opinions about black Africans when he was when he Africa to see that even if you even if you just read like like even if you just read like self reliance, it's like this is you know, it's not everything I want to talk about with with the peace police though, which is that like they're also like in terms of like fighting, like inflicting violence on other protesters, Like they are the most violent, like of of of

the factions you've seen in a pro that does happen very well, maybe not the most, Like it does happen like like they beat people up, Like I was just gonna say, like it ties into like protest security, and when protest security is usually working with these more like peace police type organizers, and then they use protest security to literally beat up people who are doing more radical action against the state. Um. That happens all the time. Yes,

oh yeah, protest security. When I see protest security or marshals, UM, I know exactly that that the that we're in a bad we're in a bad march. Um. The only time I've ever been physically assaulted by another protester was during Occupy actually um during after the night after we've been evicted, um, which is like November fift I think, Um, And if people don't remember Obama and the FBI coordinated this nationally. All the occupying encampments got swept within a week of

each other. Um. On that march, Um, we're marching around even march arount all night, um, and I'm just dragging a trash can into the street because we're being followed by police cars, and I'm literally attempting to like do some education at the same time. I'm like pulling the trash can in the street, and I'm yelling, you know, I am doing this because i want to protect us from police violence. Like if this is in the street, then the cop cars can't catch us as much. That's

why we build Barakat. I'm like literally trying to like yell this because, like, you know, because pulling a trac can the streets incredibly and effective ultimately, So it was like literally it was literally just like for education purposes at that point basically anyway, especially since a lot of people would like pull them back out of the street. Whatever.

This guy runs up on me and grabs me by the collar and lifts me up and like threatens me with this fucking fist, and he says, if my mom can't get to work tomorrow because of you, like I'll beat the ship out of it. And we're like we're marching in Manhattan and like one am, I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? And like he would have he would have hurt me, like pretty bad if a friend of mine had like luckily had my back

and like de escalated a bit. That's the only time I've ever been like physically like brought up, like into a fight um with by by another protester. Was was a guy insisting that me dragging a trash can into

the street. It was beyond the pale. But I want to just talk a bit more, but like how systematic the violence was, like because Okay, so originally I was gonna try to get someone from Occupy Oaklands to come talk about this, and I talked to a lot of people, and the biggest thing that I got was that no one would talk about it on the record because they

got because Oakland had Oakland had a blacklist. And if if you were inoccupy and like anyone else found out about it, like people like people couldn't people spent half a decade just not being able to find jobs because they they just play black listed at you one and like to this day. Like the thing I was told was like, yeah, I'm I won't talk about this because you know, like if if I talk about this, like I will be fired, all of my family everyone around

me will be fired. And there's like I think, like this is the everything. But when we talked about sort of the collapsive occupy, the the extent to which after Obamba in the f ordered the camps closed. The policy is that the comps are going to torture anyone who

attempts to like gather in a place yep, yep. For for two years, you couldn't have a meeting outside without a police attacking basically, and yeah, um and and yeah, I mean it was it was you know, I think like a lot of um, the people who now claim that that occupy is the reason that they do politics or whatever for Bernie Sanders or whatever. UM, at the time they were saying that the reason it collapses because

there was no UM organization. There was no structure, there was no political party, there was no you know whatever, there was no demands. And like it's true that it was poorly organized, like there's no doubt, UM, but like we got beat out of the streets, like we got beat out of the streets, and like people tried for six months really intensely, and for another six months after

that less intensely to restart that energy. Um. There was all this works forwards, like a general strike on May Day, um, two thousand and twelve, which ended up not really working, which is actually exactly the kind of demand filled one day of action kind of politics that they were demanding actually really failed, which I think is telling. But but in the meantime, like you know, like occupy like Zuccati

got cleared. But for a while, there was the thing No one remembers this, I don't think, but there was a thing up in um uh Union Square. Um, there was an occupation for three weeks. There was like all the Union Square freaks um and like a bunch of

occupiers um. And yeah, the cops just like it was just like batons out on site for a few years in New York, and I know it was like that everywhere else or most everywhere else, and that that came down from on high that like the police were just like, oh, what was dangerous about this was people gathering in public, So we really need to like we really need to like enforce the second Amendment being meaningless. Now we really

need to stop meetings from happening in public. Um. And that violence was super intense and super real, and a lot of people got beaten out of the movement, you know, And a lot of people got really demoralized and left. And I understand why. Um. It was scary and awful, and there was a lot of repression and um, you know, and it and it, and it has continued to sort

of that that kind of repression has continued to escalate. UM. But what has successfully happened in our movements, I think, to our to our credit, is that we haven't actually formed the kinds of hierarchical organizations that allow for more effective police repression. All the police have right now against us, for the most part is batons in the street. Um.

They have a lot more trouble infiltrating. UM, a lot more trouble, Which doesn't mean they aren't trying like crazy, but they have a lot more trouble um, um taking down the movements in the in a sort of cointel pro way, right. Um. The modes of oppression have changed a bit. UM, But that's also because we don't have It's a combination of fact that we don't have those forms of organization, but we also don't have those forms of organization because they don't emerge spontaneously from our living

conditions like they used to. Um So, I think it's it's you can't just give credit to any one thing. There's a lot of different factors that play. I will say one of one of the other things that I've noticed, and I think, I think, I'm pretty sure this happened

to talk people are talking about that occupies. It like the first thing if you have a group of people who are just they're the first thing the cops trying to do is a point a leader so that they have one person that they can do so and this and this lets them sort of this this sort of like access point to which they sort of break like the demands of the crowd is that they find one person they point in the lead and they get that person to sort of like be the liaison. My favorite

Occupied joke, I gotta give respect to Occupied Denver. This is the best joke that ever happened. And Occupy they announced the beginning of one week on Friday, we are going to announce our leader, Occupy Denver has chosen a leader and the whole movement got so upset and everyone was so angry. I was like, what the fuck? And then like they had this like big press conference and their leader was a golden retriever. It was like a

who knows to occupied Denver? Whoever organs that prank? I love you, I guess, yeah, speaking thinking of kudos to a place. The last thing I wanted to talk about was the giant like port occupation strike thing in Oakland, because I mean that that wasn't the first time people had done it, Like I know, I know during the anti war movements even do like a thousand seven eight, there's once people trying to occupy ports. But in Oakland

they like did it. They really they put like forty thousand people like in this in the port of Oakland and they shut it down. And I think that was like that was one of the things one of the stories kind of been lost from this because like you know, like that was the point. Like so like I know people in Oakland who like they got like drugged repeatedly

drugged by police informants because particularly Oakland. Also Oakland is also way the walk by ok Bood is way way less white than any other movements and they get like the kind of police oppression they get is like it's just like yeah, you know again like people people being repeatedly drugged by informants, like cops shooting people in the face, like the you know, you have you have the black list,

you have all this stuff. And I think, you know, part of it yeah, yeah, And I think part of it is because part of it's because it's a bunch of non white people and that's you know, that's just what happens. But I think another part of it was also that there was this fear about Yes, so so the reason the poor strike is able to happen is because there's sort of there's a complicated game here where the people like sort of got involved in in like

longshoreman union politics. But that sort of like fusion of of you have all the people in the street and then they start shining down ports and that like like the cops like lose their minds over that. Like that that I think was like extremely scary to them in a lot of wiz Yeah, I mean, you know, I would you know, I would defer to anyone from Oakland who was who was there during that you know, I have comrades there. I've talked to you have read about

it since. But you know, I think I think part of the heightened police oppression and the heightened power of the Oakland occupied Oakland folks was Oscar Grant rebellion. Like I mentioned the two thousand nine which had happened, which had you know, I have been a few hundred people, but it had been really rowdy. They'd been like looting and smashing. Um. Maybe maybe more than a few hundred. Maybe y're a thousand people on the big on the

first night. Um. And you also obviously have the legacy of the Black Panthers in Oakland, so you know, the Black Panther Party, you know, forms in Oakland at last in Oakland a decade and a half longer than it does anywhere else in the country. Um. So there's a lot of like And you also have the really really

intense touch ocase in the Bay that's happening. So there's an incredible political and economic pressure in the Bay combined with this history of radicalism that really you know, um, but yeah, I think also the other thing that's really interesting. I think what you said, like you you put your you know, you hit the nail on the head, Like it was largely like it was terrifying that it was the most effective direct action in the occupy movement I

think was that port shutdown. I think, without a doubt, like the biggest mass direct action that that occupy achieved, um, was that November twelve. Was that was that with the data that I don't remember near the end of the

near the end of the cycle. Um. And I think like the other thing about um about that though, that that was very similar to the altar globalization movement, right where the unions had sort of teamed up with you know, like in Seattle, there's a lot of trade unions on the ground next to all the black blocks, right, um. And I think like that that image, Um, I think

really it's really interesting. It really terrified the police, and it really it could be it could have been a vector for a certain kind of like labor first politics that could have emerged. But instead the labor first people have turned out to be all electoralists. Yeah, it seems that that's sort of a weird blip that hasn't really returned. Um. Yeah.

And it's interesting too because like because now like you know, like the the the A F l C. I oh, just like you know a f l C. A is like no cop unions great, And it's like there's this there's this sort of like split between the street movements and organized labor because they're off doing like electoral stuff and like cops ship which is this sort of yeah, and and and and have been now for for seven decades, you know, I mean, I mean really like like the

buying off of the unions and the New Deal, um, you know, with some brief you know, with brief windows of like wildcat action in the seventies and the nineties. Um, the buying off of the unions has has never really gone away. Industrial unionism in the US has has long been and in and in Europe everywhere where everywhere where those developed in the early twenty century, that labor movement, Um,

they've really been successfully bought off. And I don't think there is I don't think that those unions are like a big easy route to power anymore than I don't I don't like, I don't think they're going to overthrow the government. I mean, but I will say, yeah, this is this is my my also my the thing that I plug every time is at the A F l c I O over through a end a like yeah, like like they they they're there are people on the ground were like directing like like we're we're directing a

bunch of the anti Allende stuff. And it's like and it was the and it was the Union bureaucracies, like more recently in two thousand one, who are in the wake of September eleventh, who transformed the anti globalization rhetoric into buy American, which it turned out was often buying prison made materials. But like that was that was the Union. The Union sort of um defanged the defanged alter globalization

into buy American. And there's there's a thing, like there's a whole another story there about how that like how anti globalization turned from like you know, the Zapatistas to like Trump, which is incredibly depressing, and yeah, goes goes through this line of sort of like the replacement of internationalism with nationalism and that kind of like by local stuff and the fact that like these people sort of just decided that you know personally after Seattle part left

not eleven, they're just like we're not doing direct action again. And in Oakland's like Oakland's likes like that that's like, that's like the one big exception to that was that moment, and then it just kind of just has never happened again. And that's partially because that that union that I LW is I l W I think out there is on the on the boards that was a particularly like radical union that had happened in Wildcats like and and was like like more democratic than any of the many of

the other unions and in in those those hips. But uh yeah, but that's that's also like a big story for another time. Obviously. The connotation of global anti globalization over the twenty year period, Yeah, you know, it's a out of corny, but like what what can we actually learn from what happened there? What went wrong and sort

of what the limits of it was? Yeah, okay, So the legacy, So I think one legacy that um, the legacy that is most widely accepted and known, which we can go over quickly, is that it reintroduced class discourse, largely into the popular you know then, which is a very very bad class politics. But like you know, like um, like the you know, it reintroduced some of that sort of class war class war discourse and um, and I think more important than that, but but not that dissimilar.

It UM reintroduced UM street politics into the US. UM. I think part of the legacy that gets forgotten UM because like the general the global nous of the wave

gets forgotten as well. Like is that when when ship pops off in New York, everyone in the world knows, or at least they did then, right because America had been so successfully you know, appeased politically for so long that I think that when occupy popped off UM in rather it really like signals to the world, like the rest of the world like, oh, like this is real, like even in the you know, even in the center

of empire, like like people are rising up. UM. It's hard to remember and it's weird, but like there was an occupy in UH New York, in a UK, there was one in Tel Aviv. There was actually kind of like a pro Palestinian occupy in Tel Aviv briefly UM. And you know, I think maybe the most powerful sort of immediate tactical UM offshoot of occupied was occupyed Nigeria UM.

In the first weeks of UM when President good Luck Jonathan UM took took the fuel subsidies away and they were like sort of two weeks of really intense revolutionary rioting um in in Nigeria that that then called themselves Occupy as a way of being legible to the rest

of the world. Um. I think the other legacies though that are that are a little more sort of subtle, I guess is like that a lot of folks still in the struggle now, Like I will still meet people, you know, my age, who like I've met I have two comrades here in Philly who I didn't know at the time, but who were organizing in New York, right, Like we probably hung out in rooms together, like we probably like we were probably in the same space as But like, so like a lot of folks, you know it,

each of these waves that has come has left, you know, some people leave, some people swing right, but like there's a residue of folks that like becomes the base for the next movement. And I think like Occupy really did provide a lot of people in a way that the gap between alter globalization and Occupy didn't produce nearly as large a contingent of people, although of course there are those people. UM. But I think also like really importantly,

like the tactics of occupy. Like one of the things that was incredible about the George Floyd uprising was that every tactic that we UM have tried in the last ten years re emerged. Right. There was a prison strike, there were indigenous blockades, there were me Too style callouts UM, which of course developed out of UM punk and queer scene call outs that have been going on for a decade.

But there were occupations, right, you had the chairs in Seattle, which we can you know, well, well what we're Yeah, we will get to that one day in any case, in any case, like I think like that that has remained in the repertoire of poltarian struggle, like as a result of of occupy and and and if it had just been occupied, maybe it wouldn't be as a result of the global movement of the squares, which obviously goes

until Terrier Square and Turkey. I think it's probably the Gezi Park in a Turkey UM, which is like the last big moment of the squares really UM, but that five year wave like it was really really important, UM globally, really really important locally as well, UM in terms of building activists, building a class of of well I don't you know whatever, building revolutionaries whatever you want to call them, the good version of the thing, not the bad version.

You produced a lot of them, um and um, And I think like in terms of its limits and like what we can learn from it, Like, I think, I think taking the police more seriously it was really important. I think taking police violence more seriously was a really important legacy of occupy. I think, Um, I think pushing

towards the limit of what total democracy meant. A lot of people and Occupy remember that like a lot of Ron Paul people are like weirdo like and the Fed cranks and like right wingers like spoken Occupy and like that.

That that total open populism of of occupy I think was both probably its greatest strength and its ultimate limit, right, which was that like it was never going to be able to really like sharpen itself into the into the knife, and it wanted to be to like really change the face of global capital or whatever, um because of because there were so many white, yeah, middle class and like like a bunch of the like a lot of the like the current for right media people came out like

Center Fairbanks was like an Occupy streamer, Simpool Yeah, you're welcome for tim Poole. UMO was filming on the last day, a bunch of us um doing some things and Timpoole did not manage to continue filming, is all I'll say. And after that is when he started swinging right, So you're welcome over. Um anyway, Sorry, that guy is a

fucking asshole. He was an asshole then. Though. I think what's important to know is that a lot of these people were suss as hell back then to occupy folks, like they were around and occupy because of the nature of occupy, like but like they were, we already didn't like them, you know, like a lot of these people were already unpopular. We're already disliked in the movement. Um. So yeah, um, but yeah, I think I think so.

I think you know, there is there there are all these different legacies um from it that I think, um, ultimately, the legacy things that emerged are much more important than occupy. UM. I think, you know, one of the things about it was that it really was just like the reemergence of street politics, and like like as the re emergence of street politics, like it was pretty limited and it was

not that effective at changing things, um. And also it was incredibly effective at leading to those last decades of struggle in the US. And I think you can't you know, I think there's a tendency to want to judge movements

by the immediate results that they produce, you know. Um And like, you know, I think it is this my about to quote now, I think I am was it like when when he gets asked, you know, what was the what was the you know in in the twentieth anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, he gets asked, like, what was the what was the outcome of the Chinese Revolution? He says, it's too early to tell, right, Like, I think, like that maybe that's I don't remember who that is.

They were right, Yeah, they were right. They were a lot more people died than what we thought. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, they successfully transitioned to capitalism and the Yeah yeah it was yeah. So, um, so what was the result of occupy? It's too early to tell, um, But I think, like I also think, like the things that we've talked about here, um were core components of

what what why? It matters? I do one other kind of effect that it's had, And it's hard for me to gauge this because I've only been around post occupy, but I feel like now when people try to get stuff started, they really fall kind of into an occupy mindset where they're like, the only way to make this successful is to hold this space. And I think that is really a default way that even more experience, like both experienced organizers and new organizers really kind of keep

you saying the word default. It's because like that's just that's just really like what they go into. You saw this in a lot of different cities last year. Really they like people trying to set up spaces to hold UM. A lot of them did not work, you know, a

lot of them. A lot of them were like, oh, yeah, we're trying to try to hold the space for like an hour, because then the cops pushed us out right, and you know, in a place like the chairs they got extended out a bit longer that Chad has had its own problems um an other cities in the Pacific Northwest. This happened a city, it happened, and it happened a lot of places. I mean, like I think George Floyd Square is maybe one of the more honestly successful ones.

UM for how they were able to actually kind of keep police away, and they did they avoided turning it into this big media thing like like with the Chaz did Um And I don't know, I think I grew very I saw a lot of people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this like kind of occupy mentality because what that kind of results in is people just setting up outside of a police headquarters and trying to stay there for as long as possible, which is like

that's not doing anything, You're just kind of waiting to get beat up. Um. Yeah. Yeah, but it's complicated though, right, Like in defense of that tactic, like I think like like that was also very color. That was also very core to Ferguson. Right, they held West Florescence for a week and a half. Now, they did it much. They didn't do it by setting up tents and sitting there. Um. And also like you know, like like a thing that gets forgotten a lot in the lot in the histories,

you know, occupy Ice it was pretty small. I was big here in Philly, it was it was massive here in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So so like there were moments when that tactic really does like it's important to have a space to meet in. And I think we did learn that, but I also agree that it has become like any tactic that works once it becomes a fetish, right. Yeah, it's always trying to balance space because like you know, the two big things that have happened the past ten years,

it's occupying Hong Kong. So people try to balance these two kind of almost opposing things like hold this space and be water. That's kind of the two things that people yell at the street back and forth, and no one really knows what to do because it was yelling slogans and and and I was I was there saying

about this. So they're like the one time the people in Hong Kong got pinned down when when they had to they had this sle versus siege, it was a ship show, like you know what I say, Like the people in Hong Kong, like you know, okay, like even when they're like they they did not have by by by the time you're getting to the sort of decision of the universities like that, like you know, like they had like molot They had like like Molotov workshops, Like

there were people like standing the roof shooting bows and arrows. And cops and it's like it just wasn't enough. And I mean and part partially personally, that has to do with the fact that, like, you know, Hong Kong is in a uniquely bad position insofar as it is one city, and it's like the the the only possible way that asposment in Hong Kong like ever just doesn't get crushed by just the fact that they're outnumbered, like a thousand

to one is if it spreads. But like yeah, and it became this you know, like that that moments like yeah, that this that that the whole problem with with friend to hold space became really apparently because even if you have an extremely large number of people right like like attacking one isolated space in mass even think the cops are really good at and I think they really bad at is trying to deal with like you know, like five hundred people, like seven hundred instances of five hundred

people going through places because it just aren't enough of them. But yeah, that was what was it? Like the head of who wasn't it was a big and then national least in the National Police, uh you know whatever, um said that like we can very easily handle one March of ten thousand people, but we can't handle ten marches of one. It was and you gotta see this in Chicago, feel like this is this is this is how the

police lost control of of of the miracle miles. Like yeah, it was just there's people everywhere for everywhere and yeah, I don't know, yeah I know, And that's and that's how that's that's what you know. I mean, certainly in Philly where it was, where it was very very powerful. That's what the George Floyd rebellion looked like, was with

people were everywhere in Philly, all the neighborhoods. You know, people didn't you know, like we were out there, you know whatever, um and like they're like people didn't know what was going on Free Block South, you know what I mean. Like it was like that, like there was just there were fights happening everywhere. And under those conditions, the police can't can't, no matter how militarized they are, they can't act um effectively. Anyway they can act. They

certainly will, they will act like pigs um. But but I think like, yeah, so I think that that that sort of dispersion, But I think the other there's so there's I'm going to promote a really really weird no crank book right now, but before twenty century, like literary weirdos. Guy Uh alias Connetti um Italian wrote this book called Crowds and Power, where he attempts to he attempts to describe the entirety of human history and anthropology in terms

of crowds. This is obviously impossible and ridiculous, but that book has the best descriptions of crowd dynamics I have ever encountered anywhere, And I like, I like people who take big swings because they end up they miss. Miss has lots of interesting stuff. Um. I think that's why people like Settlers by Jason Kai so much. Like I think the thesis wasn't great, but there's so much incredible stuff in that book that like it works anyway. Um that having a really wild thesis allows you to like

really like get into some Yeah. So anyway, one of the things that Connetti talks about in that book is that UM a crowd uh an open crowd. As he describes it, an open crowd is um must constantly be growing,

and the moment it stops growing, it starts shrinking. Right YEA like this, I think that dynamic UM in terms of both movement and like a momentary protest or riot right is like really real, I can and I think one of the things that UM, particularly organizers are trained to do and like that that that we learned to do, especially in law periods, and we're like organizing these little you know, you know, these little crystallized groups of like hard cadre or whatever is that, like you that like

what we learn as organized is something that is defendable. But once you start defending something, you start losing it because we cannot take on the state or the police in a head on confrontation. UM. And this is this can be confusing because sometimes you can successfully defend for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. You can defend a space sometimes, but once people get really interested in the defending, then they begin forming bureaucracies, governments, internal policing,

security forces, whatever it is. They start becoming the like the the They start undermining the very thing that made it powerful, which was this sudden rapid growth, this sudden like you know, like like big explosion of power and self recognition that comes in the beginning of movement. And I think I don't think there's a way to will that problem away. Like I don't think we can just like think our way out of it, like it's just

a problem. But I do think that like one thing that we could take from the experience of occupy and the experience the last decade is that like if you do, you know, consider yourself someone who wants to participate in these kind of movements, which is probably why you're listening

to this podcast. Um right now, UM, don't try and defend, Like, don't try and defend, Like some things will need to be defended sometimes obviously, but like if your main thing is like the thing, we should never defend something we've achieved so far, Um, we should never not be willing to destroy it in order to like build something bigger, right, Like we should never no movement thing that we have, be it an occupy part, be it be it like a take in space. Defending that should never outweigh the

possibility of expanding. And if our strategic mindset obviously moment to moment you can't just be thinking that constantly. But the strategic mindset is like what we have now is only good to the extent that it can turn into something more. Um, Rather than we have to defend what we have now. If you can think that way, I

think it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities. UM. And I think it's it's what has worked over the last decade that I've seen is UM, when people attack, when people expand, when people try to do try to do new stuff. It doesn't always work and it doesn't always hold. But that's what When that stuff stops happening, the movement is doomed. I think I think that I think that's a really good way to wrap things up.

I think that's a nice, beautiful sentiment. I kind of view this type of thing in more than just protests and you know, and into different pasts of life. I think you can always learn from past experiences, from past struggles, but if you try to perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely gonna fail. You can, you can always learn and move on, but you should not be focused on any kind of replication. Is there any of your bookstore writings you'd want to

plug before we wrap up here? Sure? Yeah, I mean I wrote a book that came out last year, UM called in Defensive Looting. UM came out UM with bold type UM. I am currently also writing Um, I'm obsessed with movies. I write a movie review um column for the Al Jazeera Plus. Um, I did not know news letters. Yeah, the news letter sub stack. Um, if you want to read, I mean it's really it is really movie reviews. So if you want, you know, cranky anarchist theory, it's not

the spot for you. Um. Otherwise, Yeah, I'm I'm on a pretty long social media break right now. But good for you there. Eventually I'll probably come back inevitably unfortunately. Yeah, you know, I just have I have writing popping up every every now and then, and um, and if you read it, I would appreciate it. Well. Yeah, absolutely wonderful.

Thank you, and yeah, thank you for so much for coming on to talk about, um, occupying stuff that I think a lot of people hear about, but you know, at least all of my generation does not fully kind of grasp it. Um. It is. It is literally my pleasure. Like I you know, I wasted so much of my life thinking about this. I'm so glad to be able to share some of it with some people. I'm so so glad you're able to join us too. This is I've've been looking forward to us for a while. Yeah,

that's very excited. All right. That wraps up us today. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram, at cool Zone Media and Happen Here Pod. We'll be back in for a few more episodes this week. Audios. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could Happen Here.

Up it in monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.