beyondclicktivism

By Mike Czech

Something exciting is happened. A wave of loosely affiliated occupations are springing up across the Western world, drawing thousands of people to the streets of hundreds of countries in an expression of dissatisfaction with the current economic order. We are creating a network of unignorable reminders to those in charge that we demand better from them, while at the same time finding ways to relate on a direct and human level, forming closer and more meaningful bonds of communal cohesion than government can provide. Occupation is the word of the moment, and this movement of tents and banners is reshaping the way we discuss politics. We are reaching a point where the idea of occupation has taken on a mythical quality, divorced from the act itself, and the meaning is becoming distorted and confused.

The word has spread from the streets to new domains, as people heed the call to #occupyeverywhere. In the US, the website Occupy the Boardroom declares “THE 1% HAVE ADDRESSES. THE 99% HAVE MESSAGES” and provides the contact details of various “Wall Street elites” to facilitate their personal harassment at the hands of the disgruntled. Taking the struggle in another direction is a call to “Occupy Congress” in order to secure jobs for the “99%” – by signing an online petition. Perhaps most impressive is the work of studentvote.ca, encouraging people to improve poor voter turn out and “Occupy the Ballot Box”! There are very few certain commonalities between those across the world who are camped out on the streets of their cities, but perhaps the most obvious is that they have lost faith in established democratic processes and are demanding (and creating) a new way to have their voices heard. Telling them to return to Parliamentary voting, even under the trendy guise of “occupying the ballot box”, is to miss the point entirely. Furthermore, the more ubiquitously the word “occupy” is used, the more it becomes the default verb for any kind of political engagement, the more meaningless it is. Put simply; to #occupyeverywhere is to occupy nowhere.

So, what is occupation? Thethirdestate.net recently published a document of practical advice for students occupying university buildings which stressed, above all, that once inside people must initially secure the doors, rather than the space. By controlling access, occupiers have total control of how the building it used, and secure their safety within it. This exemplifies the way occupation has been used as a tactic of direct action in the past; it is the act of inhabiting and controlling a space; university buildings, workplaces, government buildings, shops or anything else (rather than just loitering in it). Sometimes this is to cause as much disruption as possible in order to create a bargaining chip when making demands. Sometimes it is simply because people believe they can put a space to better use than those who currently own and run it. When protest is inspired, as it is now, by the effects of austerity, and when those involved do not have the luxury of their own space, taking control of new areas from which to organise is essential. Whether undertaken to disrupt or to re-order, occupation is a truly radical act. Among the many iconic images to have come out of Greece in recent months, the six-story banner dropped from the roof of the Finance Ministry in Syntagma Square which proclaims to the world that it is OCCUPIED perhaps best shows the escalating power of the protesters. Similarly, the true practical value of occupation is demonstrated in Caracas as 2,500 people squat an abandoned 45 story skyscraper to alleviate the Venezuelan housing crisis. Personally, when I hear the word “occupation”, I think instantly of the 2010/11 actions of student protesters in the UK, but walking around camp, veterans of the anti-war movement have been quick to remind me that “occupation” is what the British and American military did in Iraq (or the Nazis did in France). When put into this context, an occupation must be seen as a potentially aggressive act, and certainly something which is confrontational.

So what is occupylsx? Though dogmatically peaceful and avoiding causing any damage, The occupation is a defiant and antagonistic action and we started to properly acknowledge that when we decided to stay after St. Paul”s asked us to leave. There had been a mood around the camp while we nominally had the Church”s blessing to be there that we were guests, making a protest without causing any trouble. Now we more fully recognise that the existence of an occupation is a point of conflict between the property owners and the occupiers, and that we are in a rebellious position. During the first days, I heard someone advise us not to risk our camp”s future by responding to the provocations of the “1%”; but the camp is a response, and by being here we are taking the first steps towards fighting back. We are radicals, though some are still in process of realising that. We need to continue with this, to embrace the radical nature of our presence here and our power to be disruptive.

The more we reject the interferences of outside influences, the more we resist the interference of authorities, the more we control the space as our own, the more we are an occupation.

By Tim Hardy

It is easy to get disheartened when you are demanding change and those who profit from the status quo are doing all they can to prevent it. Campaigns can drag on for years with no apparent progress. The media either ignores or mocks and lies. The world feels full of nay-sayers each spouting the gospel of common sense telling us that things are how they are and that change is impossible.

Then the breakthrough happens.

Tim Gee’s Counterpower is a newly published compendium of radical history. It tells the stories of various campaigns that may be unfamiliar to many of those standing up to the injustices of government today. An awareness of the arc traced by previous struggles, their highs and lows, their successes and failures, helps keep morale high when things look bleak and gives us examples to follow when the next step is not clear.

Tim’s book provides an accessible yet comprehensive introduction to these campaigns including the movement for women’s suffrage, Gandhi’s quest for Indian independence and the fight to end apartheid. There has never been a better time to be able to see the conflicts in which we are engaged in the context of a wider set of struggles for values we now take as self-evidently desirable.

“To make a mighty river takes many small streams,” Peter Tatchell reminded us on Sunday evening at an event sponsored by New Internationalist to launch the book. I was honoured to be one small stream and shared a brief anecdote about challenging the police tactic of kettling before a series of amazing speakers took to the stage to inspire with a series of tales of courage, determination and wit in the face of adversity. These were filmed and will soon be available online.

At a time when the newspapers and television channels owned by a rich elite are actively fanning hostility toward the Occupations taking place around the world, creating and repeating lies to discredit those in the movement as they have done with so many other recent protests, it is worth remembering that this is something those in power always do.

Counterpower includes for example the story of how the BBC “inadvertently” edited film from the picket line during the miners’ strike so that a vicious police assault on unarmed strikers looked as if it had been initiated by those picketing. Then as now, the supposedly impartial news channel showed itself to be deeply loyal to those who held their purse strings. This formed part of a systematic campaign of disinformation designed to discredit the targets of Thatcher’s hatred of organised labour. The Sun planned to run with a cover photo of the president of the National Union of Miners headlined “Mine Fuhrer”. However, print workers refused to follow orders and the cover of the paper that finally hit the stands read “Members of the Sun production chapels refused to handle the Arthur Scargill picture and major headline in our story. The Sun has decided, reluctantly, to print the story without either.” Such moments of resistance in dark times give us hope.

Real social change is always driven by popular protest not by elected officials. The vote for women, the end of slavery, equal rights for all irrespective of race – each was the result of people refusing to accept that there was no alternative and being willing to act unreasonably and to break unjust laws because they felt a moral imperative to do so.

On Sunday night, Tim pointed out that we must not see change as something that belongs to the past. Those who pretend that we have reached the end of history encourage us to accept past law-breaking as a once but no longer necessary step to create our current perfect system. They acknowledge that it was right then; they pretend it can no longer be justified. This is an important lesson to remember today in the face of increasingly politicised policing where the forces of the state are actively encouraged to overstep the mark and break the law themselves to protect the interests of those with wealth and power.

It takes courage to stand up for what is right in the face of threats of beatings or worse and the possibility of unjust detention and imprisonment. Tales of the bravery shown by others in the face of far more violent opposition is deeply inspiring.

Counterpower is a beautifully written, highly readable and necessary piece of scholarship. The analysis is the weakest part of the book and might have been more strongly developed as Nishma Doshi points out in a comprehensive review at the Topsoil  -  but by bringing together these stories in one, easily accessible place, Tim has enabled a conversation about effective campaigning that we all need whether or not we agree about what leads to success.

We live in a time of turmoil where the failures of free-market capitalism are being used as an excuse to turn the clock back a century or more and discard the slow progress we had begun to make towards a more equitable society in which all may enjoy lives of dignity, a society that was slowly beginning to accept that the destruction of the environment for immediate profit is to steal the future from the generations to come. Thousands of people are standing up around the world and saying that enough is enough. We will not pay for the crisis of the rich.

I recommend Counterpower to anyone involved in protest movements and campaigns who wants to learn more about the tradition in which they find themselves and is looking for ideas for ways in which to make our demands for change more effective.

At such a time of growing chaos, this book is a much-needed and inspiring reminder that we are not alone in taking this difficult but necessary path to a better world.

By Tim Hardy

The struggle of humanity against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Milan Kundera

Our lives are based on forgetting.

We forget the misery of low-wage work in the UK when we casually spend more than the cashier’s hourly wages on a sandwich and a coffee then get angry because they did not smile.

When we applaud the athletes preparing for the Paralympics, we forget the disabled people driven to suicide as their benefits are wrongly stopped by a cruelly stupid system created and administered by the company sponsoring the Games.

We marvel at our shiny new gadgets and the glittering icons distract us from the plight of those who labour in inhuman conditions to make these devices.

All is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Our riches are built on the misery of others and too many of our good causes are used to whitewash the evil done by those with wealth and power.

We are encouraged not to think of these and countless other injustices every day. It makes life easier to do so. The occupation is our refusal to forget.

Our libraries are closing, our universities are stripped of funding, our health service is being offered up for sale. Wages are frozen while the cost of everything goes through the roof. The poorest are attacked and threatened with homelessness. And over and over again a small clique of obscenely rich men and women sneer and tell us that we’re all in this together as they use a crisis caused by those that fund them as an opportunity to further increase their wealth.

We all know how convenient are the friendships between ministers and editors and senior police officers and the wealthy heads of transnational corporations. They’re not going to change anything without pressure. They’ve never had it so good.

This is why people occupy.

Some people don’t come because they think the occupation is too radical, others stay away because they don’t think it is radical at all.

Those who have already made up their minds as to what the answer is to the current crisis struggle to come to terms with the occupation. Too many turn away when people are not ready to instantly fall behind their flag.

The claims made about the occupiers are many. The occupation has many voices, many faces. This makes it almost impossible to understand. Outside commentators pick the voices that fit their prejudices and pretend that these views alone are what it is really about.

Some here want celebrity endorsements, others are sick of rich people cashing in on their fame. When some will be happy to walk away when asked to go, others insist that they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming away when the time comes.

Some are upset to be called anti-capitalists while others are outraged by calls to remove the “Capitalism is Crisis” banner.

A few at St Paul’s are in open communication with the police and have stated they would be willing to hand over others “to save the occupation”. Others view such behaviour with total disgust.

There is something here for everyone to hate, there is something here for everyone to love. It is maddening, frustrating, slow and messy. And it is beautiful.

The occupation is many things, one thing it can never be is harmonious. If the majority the movement terms “the 99%” all agreed, then those called “the 1%” would never be able to maintain their hold.

Can such manifestly different points of view ever be reconciled into a set of demands on which all can agree?

The occupation is a chance to experience politics as lived experience, as a self-determining body of people living together and engaged in discussing both the things that affect our immediate existence, like food, shelter, health and sanitation, but also to discuss the possibilities of applying the lessons learned here to the larger world.

It is not an economic blockade. It is not direct action. It is not an attempt to create a position of counterpower from which to negotiate with power. This is what people mean when they say the occupation is its own demand. These are its weaknesses in the eyes of some.

Even if there is no consensus here as to what should replace the global system of systemic inequality whose latest crisis has provoked this and countless other protests worldwide, the occupation is still a collective “No” to those in power. It is a refusal to forget that the solutions proposed by politicians are more of the same things that caused the crisis in the first place.

The occupation is the beginning of a conversation the whole world needs.

Representative democracy is failing us. Free market capitalism is failing us. Some persist in thinking capitalism can be reformed, others demand more radical solutions.

While politicians from the main three parties in the UK differ only in the degree to which they want to turn the knob marked “shock”, people are here, standing up and demanding that it is time for their voices to be heard not the voices of corporate lobbyists working for the rich and powerful.

A government that ignores its people and represents only the interests of the rich is tyranny.

Whatever we might eventually decide should replace the current system, nobody is sleeping on the cold London streets because they think the chance to vote for the usual suspects in a few years time is going to solve anything.

As the establishment slowly prepares for the future eviction of the occupation, using a compliant state media to repeat half-truths that will justify the eventual act of police aggression that will inevitably come, we need to prepare to remember.

The occupation will continue long after the physical encampments have gone. The contacts we make, the techniques we learn, the experiences we share and the conversations we take away with us and will continue to have long after will be our collective memory and our refusal to forget.

Whatever happens, we cannot rest until we have built a world based on mutual respect for all in which no one is forgotten.

By Tim Hardy

Why Livestream?

When we protest, the media will generally either ignore us or misrepresent us. It is up to us to make our own voices heard.

Our own coverage is crucial in getting the truth across to a wider audience.

A live feed helps to connect a protest to the world and to build solidarity with other protests going on elsewhere. Quality is unlikely to be good enough to replace higher-quality video and photographs but while police can seize and destroy cameras to hide evidence, footage already broadcast online cannot easily be destroyed.

Don’t Become an Intelligence Gatherer

If you decide to stream, please show courtesy towards your fellow protesters. At a fluffy, family friendly, theatrical protest that is being staged mostly as a media stunt, filming people is generally fine but don’t film private conversations without permission or people who clearly wish to preserve their anonymity when they are putting on or removing a mask. If you are caught in more confrontational situation with a more aggressive police response, try to focus on the police, on legal observers and on fellow independent activist-journalists.

The UK police do not respect the independence of the press and will do their best to turn journalists into information gatherers, using court orders to seize footage. As a non-accredited, independent news gatherer, you have very little protection. With a live stream you need to think carefully about what you film because it is not possible to securely delete footage later. Once it has been broadcast, you can no longer control what happens to it any more than the police can.

Prepare for the worst

Be prepared for the possibility that you will be arrested and your equipment seized. We started sleepwalking into a police state under New Labour and it is getting worse. Charges will probably be dropped eventually but your phone may be held for months while a forensics team examines it.

As well as taking the usual precautions before a protest  you need to be aware of what data the police might find on your phone. Remember too that when you delete something, it is not completely deleted and might be possible to retrieve.

For this reason, if you can afford it, try to use a second phone to your main one when streaming, one that you use exclusively for protests. Think carefully about what you do with it and which numbers you add to your contacts book. This will also reduce the inconvenience of losing it for a while. Otherwise, just be sensible about what you do with your handset. People have been convicted in the UK for jokes about riots or blowing up airports. The state has no sense of humour.

Technical Notes from Block the Bridge

When livestreaming Block the Bridge, Block the Bill  last Sunday I used a Nokia E5-00 and a PowerMonkey portable external charger. This gave me enough power to broadcast for around 6 hours.

I opted for portability. For a more static protest where you have access to a power source, higher quality results might be achieved with a laptop and webcam.

One issue noted was that sound quality from a phone microphone is not very good. It points only in one direction and the sound correction software on the device that masks “background noise” when you are using the handset as a phone actively degrades what you are trying to record when you are broadcasting. Wind noise was also a problem at times. Speaking out loud to provide a commentary can help clarify what is going on for viewers.

3G/UMTS offers reasonable speeds at the cost of reduced image quality. If you can find an open wifi access point higher quality will be possible.

The service I used for streaming was Bambuser. I am very happy to recommend it. Comments from viewers are overlaid on the phone display as you are streaming along with a count of the numbers watching. Messages of support during our containment on Lambeth Bridge made a huge difference.

These notes are shared in the hope they might help others especially those who plan to livestream Occupy LSX / Occupy London this weekend. Good luck to you all. I can’t be with you, at least not for the whole thing, but I will be following and – I hope – watching.

By Tim Hardy

In difficult ground, press on; on hemmed-in ground, use subterfuge; in death ground, fight.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

We are on death ground now. If we do not fight for the NHS, we will lose it.

Those with power won’t do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. We will not convert them with words. We have to let them know that it will cost them. In the case of Liberal Democrat and Tory MPs, we have to let them know that it will cost them votes and money. These are women and men without honour. Don’t waste time trying to appeal to their better nature: it does not exist.

It seems likely that it might take widespread civil disobedience to kill this bill and we will need to put pressure everywhere. This will be Cameron and Clegg’s poll tax.  It’s time to kick the coalition out before they do any more harm.

These are some very quick thoughts on what we can do next.  I didn’t have time to write a short post, so I wrote a long one instead

The message

Few of us are lawyers or have read the proposals in enough depth to be able to argue with full confidence about these measures so let’s focus on a simpler message: trust. Who do you trust? Who can you trust? Ask people whether they would rather put their faith in a doctor or in MPs linked to private healthcare providers or who lied to win power?

Evoke the ghost of Thatcher. Remind people of how every other “liberalising” reform the Tories oversaw has led to higher prices for us and massive profits for shareholders and bosses.

Do get informed as much as possible. Don’t let a Tory spiv sneer in the pub, “But we’re not privatising the NHS, you idiot lefties just don’t understand.” Have a response ready. With online trolls, block and move on. You’re not going to win them over. Focus on those that you might convert.

Beware of PR and spin. The Tories have a malign genius at creating false stories to distract us or letting one of their resident fanatics make an oafish and degrading remark about women or black, gay or disabled people – anything guaranteed to trigger a reaction for us on the left. We can deal with these bigots later. Let’s try to focus our anger for now.

Act locally, co-ordinate nationally

We cannot allow this to become a distant pantomime played out in Westminster. The reality of this bill has to come home to people before it is too late. Campaigns focused on the capital are too narrow as are campaigns that are exclusively cyber.

Rally outside local constituency offices. Show MPs that their acts will have consequences for their careers, that selling off the NHS will cost them their seat at the next election.

Get local press involved. Talk to your local media and make sure that they cover demonstrations outside the offices of your MP. Let everyone know that the MP they elected with their votes is selling off the NHS. Make it personal: find stories by people living in your area whose lives have been transformed by the NHS. Local papers and radio will welcome human interest stories especially if you do most of the groundwork for them.

Leaflet public transport. Sticker private healthcare & private insurance adverts. Get local shops to put up posters in their windows. Raise awareness everywhere.

If right-wing free papers – eg Metro and Evening Standard in London – carry headlines backing the coalition on NHS, grab as many copies as you can carry and dump them straight in the recycling bins.

Solidarity and working together

Different people have different abilities, different levels of mobility, different amounts of free time and money and different attitudes towards what entails legitimate protest. We should try our hardest to work together, respecting these differences, each doing what we can. For once, let’s try to keep in-fighting to a minimum. If you think someone is doing something that is ineffective, try to encourage them towards more effective action rather than lecture them on where they are going wrong. Try not preach, try to show by example. Its frustrating watching what seems like wasted effort but be careful that your criticisms don’t end up driving people to give up entirely.

Never condemn a fellow activist. You do not have to condone or condemn, that is a false choice presented by the media to divide us. If a journalist tries to force you to do so, reply firmly: “I am not interested in condemning or condoning – but this act is nothing compared with the damage the coalition are doing to the NHS.” The only people we should condemn are Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians and those who back them.

Governments have practised divide-and-conquer as a strategy to weaken opposition for centuries. Let’s not do it for them.

Online v offline

Over 150,000 people signed the 38 Degrees epetition to save the NHS in less than 24 hours.

Winning the internets is not enough but the possibilities enabled by the internet irrevocably shift the balance of power in the favour of the many. We now have many of the same tools for free that the rich lobbyists and business interests driving these changes use to reinforce their own power. Let’s use them.

Many do not have the money, time, health or mobility needed to get involved on the streets but they can be highly effective in driving the web side of a campaign.

Let’s share knowledge by leveraging sites and tools that already exist. Let’s avoid the temptation to build something amazing from scratch. We don’t have that luxury. Better a horrible looking blog right now than something beautiful that will take weeks. If existing campaign groups or sites have the infrastructure in place – such as UK Uncut perhaps – then let’s use it. It’s essential that we allow people looking to act locally to find each other and to upload their actions. Sharing information, key arguments, key facts and dates is also critical.

Please do not rely on Facebook. Facebook has a history of closing down groups and campaigns at critical moments. Use websites that the world can see not just pages that are hidden from search engines and from those who refuse to join Zuckerberg’s new media empire. WordPress for example is popular, free, easy to use – and open. Use Facebook as well as other sites but not instead of it.

Epetitions have their place but if you are mobile, consider going door to door with paper petitions – this lets you talk to people and in doing so to build wider support. It’s not about the number of signatures, it’s about raising awareness and getting people involved who might not otherwise have paid attention.

Widen the targets?

Think of as many actions as possible, large and small, that will keep pressure up and keep reminding every one of how important this is. Disrupt the right-wing think tanks that are behind this. Disrupt the companies that fund prominent Tory and Lib Dem backers of this bill.

Look at successful campaigns. An excellent resource is the recently launched global nonviolent action database.

It seems likely that there will be support for the NHS from the Occupy Manchester, Occupy London and other occupations directly inspired by Occupy Wall Street. Student occupations are another likely source of support. It’s worth pointing to an excellent cheat sheet of advice for would-be occupiers produced by The Third Estate.

Don’t wait for leaders

Don’t wait for or trust any political party to solve this even if you are a party member. This cannot be about party politics. This has to be the voice of the people. If you are a party member, please don’t try to kidnap the cause in a grab for votes: this will just cause unnecessary and distracting conflict.

By all means, parties should express opposition to the bill and grassroots groups may well take part in resistance but please nobody try and plant their flag on the whole movement.

There are many activist groups already fighting against the cuts. Again, join their actions and let us learn from each others’ expertise and experience in this fight but please try not to get sucked into factionalism and ideological purity – let that wait until we’ve won. If you’re not comfortable with the tactics of one group, find other people to work with.

This can be a rainbow coalition, however hard such things are to sustain in the long term.

We can scrabble for glory after victory, not before. The NHS is too important.

We need to shout louder

Andew Lansley listening device by Bern O'Donoghue

The NHS reforms did not appear in either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifestos. They were not in the coalition agreement. This government has no mandate to implement such wide-ranging changes. Their so-called listening exercise was a total farce – but it’s not too late to force them to listen.

Many of us are furious at today’s vote in the House of Lords but this fight is not over yet. It’s up to us now. In a speech before the launch of the NHS, Nye Bevan called the Tories “lower than vermin” and the party he reviled has not changed. He knew the dangers the idea of free health care for poor and rich alike would face and warned:

The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.

The NHS is too precious for us to roll over and give up. We are many, those backing this bill are few. They have the money but we have the numbers. Let’s make it clear that we will keep the faith and that we will keep fighting. The NHS cannot die while at least one of us is still standing.

By pfm

Support and solidarity! We’re inspired by the occupations on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country. Finally, people are taking to the streets again! The momentum around these actions has the potential to reinvigorate protest and resistance in this country. We hope these occupations will increase both in numbers and in substance, and we’ll do our best to contribute to that.

Why should you listen to us? In short, because we’ve been at this a long time already. We’ve spent decades struggling against capitalism, organizing occupations, and making decisions by consensus. If this new movement doesn’t learn from the mistakes of previous ones, we run the risk of repeating them. We’ve summarized some of our hard-won lessons here.

Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination of indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation. For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to begin from this history. Better yet, it should embrace the history of resistance extending from indigenous self-defense and slave revolts through the various workers’ and anti-war movements right up to the recent anti-globalization movement.

The “99%” is not one social body, but many. Some occupiers have presented a narrative in which the “99%” is characterized as a homogenous mass. The faces intended to represent “ordinary people” often look suspiciously like the predominantly white, law-abiding middle-class citizens we’re used to seeing on television programs, even though such people make up a minority of the general population.

It’s a mistake to whitewash over our diversity. Not everyone is waking up to the injustices of capitalism for the first time now; some populations have been targeted by the power structure for years or generations. Middle-class workers who are just now losing their social standing can learn a lot from those who have been on the receiving end of injustice for much longer.

The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society. Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the world into profit and wreckage. Now that everything has been fed into the fire, the system is collapsing, leaving even its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism—to go back to the gold standard, for example; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.

Police can’t be trusted. They may be “ordinary workers,” but their job is to protect the interests of the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act. Occupiers who don’t know this already will learn it firsthand as soon as they threaten the imbalances of wealth and power our society is based on. Anyone who insists that the police exist to protect and serve the common people has probably lived a privileged life, and an obedient one.

Don’t fetishize obedience to the law. Laws serve to protect the privileges of the wealthy and powerful; obeying them is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal. The Nazis had laws too. We have to develop the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of the laws.

To have a diversity of participants, a movement must make space for a diversity of tactics. It’s controlling and self-important to think you know how everyone should act in pursuit of a better world. Denouncing others only equips the authorities to delegitimize, divide, and destroy the movement as a whole. Criticism and debate propel a movement forward, but power grabs cripple it. The goal should not be to compel everyone to adopt one set of tactics, but to discover how different approaches can be mutually beneficial.

Don’t assume those who break the law or confront police are agents provocateurs. A lot of people have good reason to be angry. Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Police violence isn’t just meant to provoke us, it’s meant to hurt and scare us into inaction. In this context, self-defense is essential.

Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical—it delegitimizes the spirit it takes to challenge the status quo, and dismisses the courage of those who are prepared to do so. This allegation is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them.

No government—that is to say, no centralized power—will ever willingly put the needs of common people before the needs of the powerful. It’s naïve to hope for this. The center of gravity in this movement has to be our freedom and autonomy, and the mutual aid that can sustain those—not the desire for an “accountable” centralized power. No such thing has ever existed; even in 1789, the revolutionaries presided over a “democracy” with slaves, not to mention rich and poor.

That means the important thing is not just to make demands upon our rulers, but to build up the power to realize our demands ourselves. If we do this effectively, the powerful will have to take our demands seriously, if only in order to try to keep our attention and allegiance. We attain leverage by developing our own strength.

Likewise, countless past movements learned the hard way that establishing their own bureaucracy, however “democratic,” only undermined their original goals. We shouldn’t invest new leaders with authority, nor even new decision-making structures; we should find ways to defend and extend our freedom, while abolishing the inequalities that have been forced on us.

The occupations will thrive on the actions we take. We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices.

Thanks for reading and scheming and acting. May your every dream come true.

[Cross-posted from CrimethInc.]

By Jonathan Kent

I think we should be grateful for the banking crisis. So, it’s an almighty balls-up but after all it’s only money.

The reason I’m grateful for it is because it’s an invaluable heads-up for how the climate crisis is going to play out.

The point is simple. The financial crisis was years in the making. Of course the wonks like to say that no one saw it coming, but that’s really not true. It wasn’t just Nouriel Roubini. It was lots of people, many of them non-economists who rather than employing enormous intelligence, vast resources and some very long words to explain why it was different this time used a little common sense to explain why it wasn’t and why the wheels were going to come off.

I know. One small example amongst many; I used to follow a blog by David Smith, Economics Editor of the Sunday Times. David spent a lot of time back in 2004/5/6 blogging to all who’d read him that it was different this time. In turn there were dozens of his readers who would explain in quite simple and comprehensible terms why it wasn’t. I was one of them. I don’t want to bore you with all the details but the fact that money supply (M4) was expanding at 12-14% while the economy was growing at 2-3% per year was just one pretty obvious warning signal we flagged to him as were the crazy asset price-bubbles that were long since blowing up and were about to burst.

Eventually David got fed up with the comments and turned them off. Not so very many months afterwards the bubble did indeed burst, credit markets froze, the crisis proper began and lots of people, David included, swore no one saw it coming.

Now, as we all know; we, the people, have bailed them, the rich nincompoops in the banks, out. The idea was that if they went to the wall that we were all screwed. It was probably a smart move. However no one told us that part of the deal was that the banks were going to take all that money and rather than use it to invest in businesses or find other clever ways of getting it back into the economy, they were going to hoard it, rebuild their own balance sheets and pay themselves fat bonuses despite the fact that they’d done nothing to earn any sort of bonus, fat or otherwise.

The moral of this story is that there are no morals. The rich write their own rules and they really don’t care what anyone else thinks. They were able to push the banks over the brink because they knew they’d be all right afterwards – someone else would pick up the tab. It’s the old ‘hand over the cash darling or the economy gets it’ trick.

So to climate change.

Perhaps some of us are being a little naïve the response to global warming. We’re looking at all those oil company types and part of us, just a little part maybe, but a part nevertheless thinks they’re going to wake up at some point and realise that the car is about to go over the cliff and do something just in time.

They’re not. They’re not because the model they have in mind is the same one as the banks. If everything goes into meltdown, if millions are displaced, if millions die… it’s not going to be them.

Crazy yes? Well don’t be surprised if they’re figuring that if you have enough money and can buy up acres in the arctic on spec, just in case you need a liveable bolthole, or build a bunker or hire security or whatever to make sure you and yours survive, you figure you can purchase your way out of the disaster that everyone else will live through.

It’s not so much that they believe climate change is or isn’t for real. It’s that they think that they don’t need to care because whatever the outcome their cash gives them an opt-out. After all experience, not least the banking crisis, has taught them exactly that. It’s the little people who suffer not them. And should things really head towards Armageddon not only will it be too late before they realise but they will still probably not care. After all the end of the world party will be a hell of a bash and so long as they have cash to put goons on the door and keep hoi polloi out they’ll die just the way they lived – in style.

The thing is we now have their number, and a choice.

[Guest post by Jonathan Kent. Originally posted at The Headstrong Club.]

I plan to be live broadcasting from the UK Uncut Block the Bill Block the Bridge protest today. The embedded link above should show the latest broadcast. If it fails to display, try refreshing the page.

I may start a little earlier depending on what is happening. All broadcasts from the day will be archived at my bambuser account page.

By Tim Hardy

Let me talk about heroes.

Heroes are the nurses who work in our hospitals, the sisters and brothers who help the sick maintain their dignity in the face of illness, dispensing medicine, patiently changing soiled linen and dressings, feeding and assisting the immobile and bringing cheer and compassion to a situation that is confusing, frightening and lonely.

Heroes are the doctors who, after years of study, work punishing hours in difficult circumstances to help diagnose and treat those who are ill and in pain.

Heroes are the members of the army medical services in the First World War and of the emergency medical service in the Second whose sacrifice and courage saved countless lives and gave comfort to the dying. Their example was the proof that Bevan needed that a national health service might work.

The National Health Service is the envy of the world, a service fit for heroes, built by heroes and staffed by heroes – and a service under threat from the Conservative government.

When you are ill, you do not want to be worrying about how much it is going to cost you or whether or not to report a worrying symptom to a doctor out of fear of how expensive an expert opinion might prove. Anxiety about the price of medical treatment kills.

We have seen what private care means in the failure of Southern Cross: massive payouts for company directors and investors while elderly residents are left wondering if they are to be made homeless.

We have seen what private health care means in Winterbourne View residential hospital in Bristol where vulnerable adults were systematically abused to the point of torture by staff until journalists finally exposed the scandal.

There is no place for markets in healthcare.

Faith in markets is at best a delusion, at worst a cynical lie used by those who plan to get rich from the opening up of services to profiteers. It is folly, an idea to be cast in the dustbin of history like the belief that the sun revolves around the earth.

Look around you. Look at impossible house prices, spiralling rents, escalating food costs, the continued, cascading failure of the finance industry – markets do not work. Look at the environmental destruction around you – the freedom of markets at all costs cannot be the only thing of value in our society.

The trouble with so-called free markets is that they deliver only for the rich.

David Cameron lies.

He lied before the election saying that he would protect the NHS.

He lied at the dispatch box claiming doctors and nurses backed his proposed changes to the health service.

He lied again today at his party conference claiming that he is doing the best for the service – all the while pushing through hasty, unnecessary reforms that will open the NHS up to exploitation and abuse from private providers who will put profit above care.

David Cameron lies when he talks about heroes because his reforms desecrate the memory of those who sacrificed so much to build a system of public health that is the envy of the world.

Over and over again, he and his fellow Tories tell us there is no money left – yet they are spending £2 billion on a set of reforms that represent an irreversible step towards the privatisation of the National Health Service, a process that will see the poorest denied the care they need because the markets care only for profit.

These changes are an irrevocable step towards the privatisation of the NHS and must be blocked.

The National Health Service is an example for the world and a model for the kind of society we might build if we didn’t allow those consumed by greed to rule us.

Recently Cameron has taken to stealing slogans from the left but this is our fightback and we will not stand idle while he destroys the NHS.

This Sunday I will be on Westminster Bridge along with thousands of others who are coming from all over the country because we care deeply about the NHS and will not see it vanish without a fight.

Come and join us on Sunday October 9th at 1pm on Westminster Bridge. Block the Bridge, Block the Bill. It is the least we can do to honour the heroes who built our health service.

By Tim Hardy

We’re making sure that this generation does not bankrupt the next. Not saddling them with our debts, not maxing out on the nation’s credit card, but building a better future for our children.

Tory Party Chairman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi

For a party feigning concern about “the nation’s credit card”, the Conservatives are remarkably comfortable with the rest of us getting further and further into debt.

Through slashing funding for further education and tripling fees, the Tories have shown that they are more than happy to saddle the next generation of students with debts.

Attempts to restrict the interest rates that can be charged by legal loan sharks were shot down by Conservatives with the help of their yellow colleagues.

London’s Tory mayor, the man Private Eye has nicknamed Borisconi, has a notoriously comfy relationship with Wonga who currently charge an APR on payday loans of over 4000%.

Indeed, the official OBR estimates from March show that it is estimated that household debt in the UK will grow by 0.5 trillion pounds over the next four years.

For all their talk of paying down the nation’s credit card, the Tory plan is merely to shift the debt onto us, onto our credit cards, our overdrafts, our mortgages. It is a lie to justify selling off what is left of our country to those who fund them in a crisis that was also caused by those who fund them. It’s the heist of the century.

Back in October, a Guardian editorial warned of the dangers of misleading metaphors and savaged Osborne’s distorted rhetoric.

Government finances are not like a credit card or (that other Tory favourite) a household budget – because countries are not individuals. As far as anyone can tell, the British government will last for centuries – unlike any household. The British government can print its own money and raise its own taxes – not so that nice couple on Acacia Avenue. An individual might feel good about being in the black – but, in pure accounting terms, if a government runs a budget surplus then that means businesses and households are in deficit, which isn’t such good news. For a government to run a deficit makes the sort of sense that a family could never justify to itself. Mr Osborne’s analogy is as off-beam as his conclusion – that what Britain needs is savage spending cuts. A powerful metaphor wins political arguments, but the wrong metaphor just distorts them.

Sadly this message has been lost.

Ed Miliband has shown in his recent speech to the Labour conference that he is uncritically singing from the same hymn sheet, trotting out the same idiotic line about paying off the credit card as the government.

Every time a politician says we have to do with the nation’s finances what a prudent householder would do with a credit card bill, you can stop listening. It’s nonsense.

If you want to read an analysis that systematically destroys the idea that the deficit can be compared to a credit card and then explains why the apparent solutions that this metaphor suggests are wrong, read What’s the best way to reduce the deficit? at False Economy.

Clifford Singer recently argued that since politicians tend to move to the right, the left needs to regain its voice and create its own narratives so that we are not leaving it up to the editors of the Express and the Daily Mail to do so.

We cannot wait for elected representatives or for the media to drive this narrative. It is up to us. We need to start challenging the lies which politicians use to justify their actions and journalists who fail to question and to do so loudly and repeatedly until they can no longer pretend that they cannot hear us.

Only an idiot or a con artist would describe the economic choices facing the government as that of paying off “the nation’s credit card”. Next time an MP trots out this line, demand to know which one they are.

[With thanks to @langtry_girl for extra research.]