Strategic targeted mobile occupatioins

Talking with Michael Mizner at Independence Mall today. He said he’d been talking with a few others about moving the day time occupation/ nighttime sidewalk sleep-in to in front of the city stock exchange. I only wish there were enough to do both. I really like the Independence Mall sitting occupation, but Mizner’s point that we’re mostly visible only to tourists here made sense. … then got to thinking

What I like about the blank-sleeps and the continuing presence at Independence Mall (day 12 today!)… is the way it fits the principles of guerrilla, asymmetrical struggles. You don’t mass all your forces in one spot and sit there waiting to be crushed—you hit one place, disappear & show up somewhere else. Maybe several places at once—spreading out police without weakening our own actions.

I’m thinking, what this needs is strategic targeting—mobile occupations, planning for each move—targeting key structures in the system and over time, tying them together to illustrate how they work together. Each type of target creates different opportunities for coalition building—the Wells Fargo campaigns are a perfect example, expanding the message to cover the banking and financial system, forging tactical alliances with groups like Fight for Philly, moving out to housing & foreclosures.

So we could do this…say, at the transportation centers, Frankford, Eire Ave—do the research, have information, send press releases. A whole range of issues here—maybe with a simul at a couple of the Pendot centers (public transit & private auto… relative public expenditures—roads hiways versus transit, comparative impact on urban infrastructure. Be there for days, a couple of week.  And connect with those most affected. Hey, a post 2 AM news conference teach in at each end of the Frankford Shuttle—which is the work-life line for the cities working poor, orderlies, low end restaurant workers, nursing home workers, those who clean up the office towers in Center City.

Outside of the welfare offices…

The Food distribution centers on the river…

Move from one to the other over the course of a season, several months. Planned, strategic actions with multiple educational benefits, connecting with the cities REAL working infrastructure and those who make everything go… or not.

and who knows… after a year or so, we might have a large enough assemblage of those we’ve connected with—and learned from—to talk SERIOUSLY about a general strike.