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A recent news report (also see this) reveals the New York City Police Department has begun to direct a “contingent of lawbreakers and lowlifes” found in New York City’s public parks to take their party to Zuccotti Park! Divide et impera! By creating a status distinction within the occupied space, this handy tactic forces the Occupy Wall Street group to police its space, suffer drug sales and other crimes, secure its individual and collective possessions, restrict the food it supplies, etc. Worst of all, it might also create a social condition which New York City’s government can use to remove the Occupation.
That said, let us appreciate how quickly the city’s government and the NYPD abandoned broken windows policing when doing so suited its purposes! Indeed, if we assume that the lawful exercise of an American’s free speech rights is not at all disorderly and that the Occupy Wall Street group has not broken a legally rational law, it follows that the Bloomberg administration and the Police Department have generated the urban disorder one can find around the Occupation!
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“Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all– the policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Daley
Hey, Szielinski, thanks for highlighting that NY Daily News article.
OccupyDenver is facing identical problems – well, I’m certainly not accusing our Democratic mayor and governor, bless their hearts, of actually using the “divide et impera” strategy or, goodness me, of actually encouraging homeless people to move to the Occupy site- but the homeless have moved into (or they have always been at) Civic Center Park. Certainly, the drug dealers have been there for years.
While the Occupiers will hash issues out at the daily GA’s and, once the rules are agreed upon, actually follow them, the homeless (and the drug dealers) are fairly anarchic.
And then there are the Anarchists – the group that has taken over the running of the OccupyDenver food kitchen. They are simply not into rules of any kind.
At last Friday’s afternoon GA, the OccupyDenver folk attempted to resolve issues of sanitation, safety and PR related to these folk. Inclusiveness warred with a perceived need for some basic rules. This will be an ongoing process with the Occupy folk.
I’m sure the NYPD is aware of the resource problems New York’s street people population will create for the occupiers. Critics of the movement have also noted that this or that occupation has proved to be tardy when delivering food to the homeless. Movement opponents want to create a moral problem for the occupiers along with the resource problems. They also want to smear the occupiers when they lack food to give to the homeless and demoralized.
Yep!
Were back to the argument between Marx and Bakunin. Marx wanted a vanguard cadre and a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Bakunin wanted a Revolution of the dispossessed or as Marx called them the lumpen. Marx thought this class was unreliable and anti-revolutionary by its very nature. What will it be? The problem with the homeless and the mentally ill , drug addicts etc. is this, are these Occupations equipped to really deal with these people?
I thought about Marx and Bakunin when Chris Hedges sided with Bakunin in his latest essay!
My position in brief: Marx’s industrial working class never became the majority in this or most countries. Therefore, the industrial working class cannot be the revolutionary class.
That said, wage labor is the norm for the majority of the population. But they have different interests due to their differing lives and cultures. I use popular classes when I want to refer to class conflict and those who mostly sit in a weaker position in this conflict.
Marxian revolution-making oscillated between historical determinism (Second International) and various forms of voluntarism (the Third and Fourth Internationals and Council Communism). Both conceptions have not brought about the revolution. In fact, a by-the-book Marxian revolution would usher in an age of super abundance, an achievement which makes less sense these days given the need for oil by every form of industrial production. Ergo….
As Hobsbawm puts it somewhere, and I’m loosely paraphrasing from memory, “We are now left with mixed economies which he must struggle to make just.”
I do not believe we have anything useful in the idea of a revolutionary subject. The lumpen proletariat thus have no greater claim to be the agent of history redemption than the proletariat, the third world proletariat, women, people of color, etc. The revolutionary subject is just a secular version of the Messiah. Human beings can do without that burden.
I’m not a very good 19th century revolutionary….
I do believe in the power of solidarity and reasoned discourse. If the species is lucky, these capacities will enable it to solve a lot of pressing social, political and environmental problems. Mine is a “no certainties, no guarantees” form of radical politics. One only engages the world and then evaluates the results.
Finally, the Occupations are not well equipped to handle the homeless, the deranged, the addicted and the violent adventurist. They’ll need to make do, though. Their enemies will demand it of them.
Revolting, that the police are encouraging this in New York. I know in Austin, we are having issues also with an element that is not really related to the occupy movement, but is there nonetheless using resources. I personally do not really feel safe about going down there by myself at night.
There have been issues in Asheville NC too… some of the homeless are great and really add to the movement. Others are not helpful and have proven violent on occasion.
It’s telling that 1) there are homeless folk in the United States and 2) that they prefer the help given by the Occupiers over the aid provided by the local governments.
The NYPD would encourage NYC’s subway rats to encamp at Liberty Plaza if they could.