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it’s been an amazing experiment in community building and tactics of resistance and autonomy, directly inspired by y’all! I arrived just in time on the first week to witness its flourishing, the standoffs, the tactical victory that was collectively felt and rejoiced on the second day of confrontations when the police accepted temporary defeat in one sense. They never came at us at dawn in force ever since. We won the battle on that second day without a single arrest.
The space had a distinct feel originally because it was organized with deadline in mind one week after it started. The original group of organizers were there to demand one thing through the legitimate lines of bureaucracy. The budget cuts. After those demands were not met we had a choice to remain or leave. It felt like the right decision was to do a tactical retreat, regroup and find new grounds. The territory of city hall is not a tactically sound space to occupy long-term since we were constantly surrounded by cops. In other words, we were situated in the belly of the beast. It’s not easy being there and a deterioration of the situation was surely to follow if we occupied long term. But at the same time, we recognize the idea of leaving behind a footprint, a hub, or an outpost to commune and offer services to the community. After that final confrontation with the police, which I felt was symbolical in the sense that we realized this wasn’t a fight for territory- it was operating at a higher level of diplomacy. We know that they have tanks. A lot of the original bodies and organizers withdrew. Which created a power vacuum, and other factions stepped in. They are unfortunately very confrontational in their style of managing and the demographic in the camp obviously shifted as more and more homeless people came in. It’s a natural progression and one wonders if the state counts on it as it creates chaos and instability. We are now caretakers and it is quite hard, as most of us - the ones who remain, who have a place to go home at night if we so desire are not trained to handle confrontations with mental illness. I believe homelessness itself creates mental illnesses. We know the state has failed these community members so as hard as it is we are doing our best not to turn our backs on them. But the conversations have obviously shifted as the tone of everyday existence in the camp devolve.
what we need now more than ever is solid tacticians; we need to understand why the uprisings of 68’, the occupations of 2011 and your very own experience in Seattle failed - and I say that knowing full well that they are not true failures. These spaces are not about territorial conquest- they are there to create connections and organic experiences of shared revolt.
I think the question at hand now is how to avoid a revolutionary gesture that will exhaust itself into a sterile activism.
Despite the state of things, the space remains autonomous from the police. And that is the most novel thing of it all. After witnessing the way we used social pressure to keep any cop from sticking around inside the space, I was delighted. With constant alert and collective action we such spectacles of police and plainclothes officers to a point where as much as they tried to hide it, their humanity cracked under an social pressure like any human being would and leave. You could see it so clearly with the few defiant once on the first week. It may be true that they are not paid enough- but fuck them. Obviously they are on the wrong side of history.
> You don’t have to explain the institutional allegiances of the police to certain communities. Many folks already know the score. All that’s holding them back from joining in active resistance is a sense of isolation, weakness, and despair. In this context street fighting and vandalism are not so much proofs of method but statements of commitment and seriousness. *There are others like you who are willing to fight, and we can hurt them, or at the very least we can shatter the air of invulnerability that pervades business as usual.* It’s hard to overstate the psychological effect this can have on those who feel ground down or fenced in. Riots are especially useful when passive protest is widely acknowledged in certain circles to be laughably useless and indicative of protesters unwilling to commit. It doesn’t matter if a riot is directly successful on the scale of burning down city hall or permanently evicting the police from a neighborhood, what matters more is the change in perceptions. There’s a long history of social struggle skyrocketing after street confrontations — not because folks believe a few busted windows or bruised cops pave the road to a better world, but because it at least demonstrates potential.
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A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.”
— Giles Deleuze (1925-1995)
> That’s why politicians and police consistently go apeshit over things like measly storefront windows. Their control is dependent in no small part on being *seen* as in control. Certain boundaries to what’s considered feasible must be secured at all cost lest they begin to lose the illusion of invulnerability that dissuades the subjugated from rising up. No one in power gets hysterical when a common thief, for example, breaks a window because thieves are perceived as part of the same ecosystem of exploitation in which cops and CEOs position themselves as apex predators. Political vandalism is potent in part precisely because it risks much for no personal gain. It announces a violation of the established rules of the game, both of power and protest.
On another note I made this composite from the occupation;
I was introduce to the concept of Heterotopia recently: worlds within worlds ; a placeless place; a physical representation or approximation of a utopia. Foucault provides some examples: cemeteries, brothels, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Turkish baths… I was immediately taken back to these paintings of an artificial antiquity that never fail to stir a very special feeling within me.
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