Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Occupy Philly... on the verge: Nothing About us Without Us!

Robins October 3, Monday, 2011

12 sitting around a table… I'm thinking... oh good. It will be easy, with only a few of us... 5 more come in, and 10… and we move the tables aside and sit in a circle. More come in, until there's between 50 and 60. Hard to count because there were a few who left, then came back, then more came. No. This won't be easy.

A long meeting. Second half we began to find the flow. We decided on an agenda, preliminary procedure… but I should, and will...wait for the minutes to be released, for decisions to be presented at tomorrow’s GA

This is not about me.

Three hour meeting... all planning for tomorrow. Hard work. Really hard work Had a strange and interesting meeting and wonderful conversation after--a man from Okinawa who somehow singled me out. Leads me to the Westbury, offers to buy me a drink. I don't turn him down.

He doesn't understand—no. Not true. He understands, profoundly understands… but from a very different idea of how we bring about change. He doesn't believe or trust the bottom up process.. where are the wise men? he wants to know, who formulate the ideas and pass them down and lead the people?

I'm an American... that other kind of American, who never stopped believing, like Thomas Payne--that no leader, no matter how wise, can know what people need and want--without them. I love the slogan that came out of a group of people with 'mental' illness... and spread to all disabled... or whatever they chose to describe themselves...ourselves...

"NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US"

... Can't think of a better capsule phrase for what I believe.

NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US!

Tomorrow, we're gonna chose a site and time. No way! he said! You're not ready! They don't know what they're doing! They're too young! ... We're never ready, I said... but the only way to be ready, is act from where we are and learn as we go from our mistakes. That's the REAL American way

... shit... I'm even regaining some pride in being an American!

This movement is fucking amazing!

Power to the Revolution!

2 comments:

  1. There's this amazing and beautiful process.. where the people teach the wise men and wise men teach people all in one motion. I have trouble distinguishing "the wise man" FROM the people. The wise man, too is of the people.

    I suppose more interesting to me is the way in which the people ARE the wise man. Straw polls, public opinion, blogosphere, twitter. I certainly don't understand HOW it happens, but it cannot be denied that we do in fact manage to create works of art, wage wars, and generally make decisions as groups.

    No single person can be consistently pinpointed as the cause of any historical event. For a though provoking example, look to Napoleon in Tolstoy's "War and Peace"

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  2. We create assemblages that are autopoietic systems in their own right, while each remaining autonomous withing that assemblage. Not everyone is going to be able to see this at first, but it isn't the issues and demands we chose to address which define us--these change as our situation changes--but in the Occupation sites we are creating--or discovering in ourselves, among ourselves, new, very real, self-sustaining social structures--which choose those actions & issues--and there is nothing more revolutionary we will do than create these new social assemblages.

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