An open source protest/insurgency doesn't have a formal doctrine. The tactics and methods (the conflict's source code) used are developed bit by bit, by the participants. This is why the insurgency/protest is “open source”. For a bit of tactical innovation to make it into the conflict's source code it needs to vault three hurdles:
+ It needs to advance the plausible promise of the protest.
+ It needs to actually work in practice.
+ Others need to hear about it (from news reports to cell phones to social media) so they can COPY it.
The Occupy Snake
Here's a small/cool example of tactical innovation that Portland Occupy developed (very nice article by Lester Macgurdy). It advances the promise of keeping a camp and works in practice. The only problem is the lack of coverage it has gotten (which limits its impact).
The Portland Occupation stumbled upon a tactical innovation regarding occupying public spaces. This evolution in tactics was spontaneous, and went unreported in the media…
Now, to move on to the actual application of these tactical principles (that evolved by accident rather than conscious thought), we can take the example of Shemanski park on the 3rd.
This post looks at the social and economic conditions that fostered the emergence of the Occupy movement, as well as a timeline of events, books, and commentary that, in retrospect, offer significant precedents or stimulants to the form and energy of Occupy.
Coheartedly,
Tom
*** CONSIDERING THE ROLE PLAYED BY THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, UNEMPLOYMENT, THE TRIALS OF YOUTH, AND THE GENERAL DEGRADATION OF CULTURE ***
And here was another thing many in the middle class were discovering: The downward plunge into poverty could occur with dizzying speed. One reason the concept of an economic 99 percent first took root in America rather than, say, Ireland or Spain is that Americans are particularly vulnerable to economic dislocation. We have little in the way of a welfare state to stop a family or an individual in free-fall. Unemployment benefits do not last more than six months or a year, though in a recession they are sometimes extended by Congress. At present, even with such an extension, they reach only about half the jobless. Welfare was all but abolished 15 years ago, and health insurance has traditionally been linked to employment.
In fact, once an American starts to slip downward, a variety of forces kick in to help accelerate the slide. An estimated 60 percent of American firms now check applicants' credit ratings, and discrimination against the unemployed is widespread enough to have begun to warrant congressional concern. Even bankruptcy is a prohibitively expensive, often crushingly difficult status to achieve. Failure to pay government-imposed fines or fees can even lead, through a concatenation of unlucky breaks, to an arrest warrant or a criminal record. Where other once-wealthy nations have a safety net, America offers a greased chute, leading down to destitution with alarming speed.
5.0 out of 5 stars 6 for Democracy as Design, 4 for Fragmentation, 5 on Balance,December 15, 2011
I bought this book after being turned to Reflexivity by Dr. Kent Myers, principal author of Reflexive Practice: Professional Thinking for a Turbulent World–disclosure, he profiled me in that book, to my great surprise, as good a gong as one could ask for. This is a great book, alongside which I recommend Buckminster Fuller's books Critical Path and Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure, and the more recent book from Medard Gabel, co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, Designing a World That Works for All: How the Youth of the World are Creating Real-World Solutions for the UN Millenium Development Goals and Beyond.In that context the book is a five. I completely agree with the earlier review that graded it a four on basis of spottiness (some great chapters, some not so great), but I upgrade it to 5 for two reasons: first, because the entire book has an explicit focus on Democracy As Design and Democracy as a System of Systems that cannot be “broken down” the way science strives to break down what it studies. In Democracy, as in Reflexivity, the engaged participants are wild cards, nothing can be predicted, agility and resilience are everything, and it is the relationships (the Yang) rather than the objects (the Ying) that really matter. That is six-star stuff no contest.
Such is the self-referencing nonsense produced in contemporary American political discourse shaped by a perpetual election cycle that disconnects debate from the real world and stifles rational governance, but keeps the masses entertained and distracted, much like the circuses did for the Roman masses in the waning days of the Empire. With American politicians are arguing endlessly how great a victory we achieved in Iraq, a natural question remains unasked: What does the rest of the world — particularly the Arab world — thinks of our ‘success'?
Attached, FYI, are two thoughtful alternative points of view on this question.
The first headline is from Rami Khouri's. He is a columnist for the Lebanese Daily Star and is syndicated by the prestigious Agence-Global. The second headline is from Patrick Cockburn's, writing in the Independent [UK]. He is one of the most well informed western reporters now writing about the Middle East.
The United States under President George W. Bush drew on a deep well of nonsense, lies and fantasy when it entered Iraq in 2003. President Barack Obama continued this bipartisan American tradition when he said Monday that the departure of American forces from Iraq left behind a country that can be a model for other aspiring democracies. On the other side of the Arab world on the same day, the Tunisian people elected a new president, providing a more credible example of how Arabs can aspire to become democratic without foreign armies destroying their national fabric. Read more.
World View: For all its military might, the US has failed to get its way in Afghanistan and Iraq, severely denting the prestige of the world's only superpower
Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Cockburn's article contains one major assumption, to wit that the US Government will not attack Iran nor condone an Israeli attack on Iran. We disagree. Now more than ever, Israel is bent on attacking Iran and drawing the US in–the deployment of US/NATO troops all around Syria, the plans for major NATO air operations ostensibly against Syria (long billed, falsely, as an Iranian puppet state) all point to precisely the opposite: a cresendo joint US-Israel mega-attack on Iran and Syria together.
The Occupy Snake
