The Occupy Movement: Back to the Drawing Board ~ 2012 January 1 ~ by Steve Beckow

The Occupy Movement: Back to the Drawing Board
2012 January 1
Posted by Love Reporter and First Contact Team Member Steve Beckow
 

Occupying the New Year

Thanks to Casey for relocating us to a new server to get rid of a nagging problem of slowness in posting, etc.

Casey worked away while the rest of us were partying last night, definitely above and beyond the call of duty.

We’ve reverted back to our original identity in the New Year. That means that we’ve changed our banner from “The [Occupy] 2012 Scenario” back to “The 2012 Scenario.”

We’re still avid supporters of the Occupy Movement but the movement appears to have lost its first blush of excitement and is now in concentration or re-evaluation phase.

It needs to find an expression that is suitable to the dead of winter and that can withstand police opposition or it may fade away, to be succeeded by a new and more adaptable form of public resistance to the elite.

I don’t hesitate for a moment in believing that everything the Occupy Movement stands for will be ultimately successful and successful within this coming year. The people will rise from victory to victory until they do at last oblige the elite to give way. I have no doubt of that.

But I think we now need a different approach to take us the next step forward. Just as the Arab Spring arose from the act of one individual, the same may occur here. But at this moment, what that act will be and what will arise from it is not necessarily clear.

There seems very little more to be gained from parking ourselves in a public square in the dead of winter. How rousing can our support be for simply freezing in the dark?

Parking ourselves in one place allows the police to do their worst against us. As long as the elite commands the city’s administration and services, they can rout the protesters as they have done so far.  Once the protesters’ belongings have been taken, given their lack of resources, it’s difficult to set up again.

It’s as if we unintentionally placed ourselves in a situation where we’ve had to build on our weaknesses. It isn’t strategically or tactically sound, it seems to me.  We need a better plan.
 

I personally think that rallies and marches such as are happening in Moscow, Syria, and Egypt are more promising. They are over in a day. People can return to their warm homes. The police have less time to organize their opposition.

The people can surge, give way and regroup, surge, give way, and regroup. They are not sitting ducks as are permanent residents of tents on city land in the dead of winter.

It’s never a pleasant prospect for a movement to have to admit that its original plan may not have been the most effective.  But I think we need to do that here and move on.

We haven’t yet found the soft underbelly of the elite. We haven’t yet found where they are most vulnerable. And we haven’t yet translated our resistance against them into something that is both non-violent and yet maximally certain to win the sympathies of the rest of the 99% who may not yet have joined us.

We may not need to. As the energies rise on the planet, we may pass beyond the phase where we need to actively rebel. And Disclosure will also be the supreme game-changer.  Occupy may have already done the work it was supposed to do.

I don’t feel any sadness over the ebbing away of the Occupy Movement in the dead of winter. I have complete faith that the universe is unfolding as it should. But I also don’t know what the next move will be. And, like everyone else, I’m impatient to see the last vestiges of elite rule and control fall.