Forum Post: Should Occupy Use Violence? I Dunno — Should the Cops?
Posted 12 years ago on Feb. 10, 2012, 8:36 p.m. EST by darrenlobo
(204)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
In the official narrative, the question always concerns whether anyone and everyone but the state should engage in violence. The question of whether the state should engage in violence, or whether state violence should be evaluated in terms of the same standards of reasonableness as violence by nonstate actors, never crosses the threshold of visibility. The legitimacy of violence by the state is never even articulated as an issue.
That’s a shame. The state is not a mystical entity, a sum greater than the human beings making it up. The state is simply a group of human beings cooperating for common purposes — purposes frequently at odds with those of other groups of people, like the majority of people in the same society. And violent actions by an association of individuals who call themselves “the state” have no more automatic legitimacy than violent actions by associations of individuals who call themselves “the Ku Klux Klan” or “al Qaeda.”
The violent actions of the state deserve to be evaluated using the same criteria by which we judge the morality of the violent actions of any other grouping of individuals.
In the vein of this thread, here's something to consider:
http://www.refuseandresist.org/ndp/082497rockwell.html
These sorts of actions by ANY should never be tolerated. By any group of any group. Many at Occupy make the claim of unethical behavior by Wall St. AND Washington and we recognize that police act as agents for those groups; protecting the status quo.
Many at Occupy protest the abuse and corruption that has occured by those groups, enabled by the way they interact. Many at Occupy feel that there exists an ethical and perhaps moral questions about the outcomes of the agendae of those groups that require resolution. Many occupiers feel that those groups have failed the majoity. Government has failed to protect the interests of all citizens and Wall St. has failed to be good corporate citizens, acting in in ways that are harmful to many.
Many at Occupy feel that a resolution will require actions that focus attention on the inequities that exist because of how the government and Wall St. interact and how that interaction has affected the lives of the vast majority of Americans in a negative way. As I see it, many Occupiers seek to raise the ethical and moral bar in demanding changes necessary to change the government/Wall St. dynamic. To act exactly as those who seek to supress change is to become what we condemn. We'll have "sold our souls to the devil."
How can Occupy claim a moral and ethical high ground if we use tactics against government and Wall St. that many Occupiers find ethically and morally repulsive?.
I believe this movement has lost focus. Your battle is not with the police...They are part of the 99%! You are in essence fighting yourselves. Declare a truce! Be the bigger person. Pull back from the streets for now (you can always go back in the spring or summer or next year).
Occupy The Information!
Who is the enemy? Wall Street right?...NO! Wall Street is a place. Expose the names, show the faces of the criminals behind the bailout heist. Nobody bothers to know who these people are. Therefore, your enemy doesn't exit! Expose these people and all who are involved in the corporate charade. Start with this guy:
Edward M. Liddy- Chairman & CEO, AIG, 2008-2009 Bailout: $180 BILLION Bonuses Paid to Worthless Execs: $165 MILLION
I agree with you about the police - they do what they are payed to do, they follow orders.
With that said, I would invite you to dig deeper. The problem isn't with individuals either - the problem is with the legal environment. He, who eats your cake ain't crazy, we better find out who gave it to him and how. Our politicians have created a corrupt and loopholed legal environment, even the little that FDR was able to put in place has been ruined.
Therein lies the true problem - political and legal corruption. There is no need of violence (except for self-defense), there is a dire need of organization, education and communication.
Check votersway.com.
I find most violence disgusting and morally offensive. But the greater issue is; is it valuable as a tactic? I believe it is worse than useless. As a defensive tactic it invites even greater retaliation by a superior force, but worse, appears to offer some justification to the greater world for the use of that force. And as a tactic to further the movement it is this movement’s single greatest danger. I reject violence under all circumstances.
Including taxation?
i agree with you 100%
Mother bears, mice, seagulls, ants, and every other living creature on Earth disagrees. I trust them. Violence is hard to define. The status quo is underpinned by incredible and unrelenting violence that is invisible to most of us because it is normalized by the worldview we have been educated into. This isn't metaphorical violence. It is literally genocidal violence. Throwing an empty plastic bottle at a cop in full body armor after he attacks you with poison gas and bombs is about the pettiest form of violence I can imagine. Maybe it is not strategically optimal, but mostly because people become absolutely appalled that anybody would dare send violence UP instead of down the hierarchy, and begin defending the hierarchy for fear that we will 'make them angry.' I am a pacifist at heart. I don't even kill ants, even when they are climbing on my honey jar. There are rats in my house but I choose to coexist and try not to leave out food because maybe then they will go away. But against powers like those we face, we have to do whatever is necessary to end their genocide. No matter what we do, if it actually begins to threaten their power they will call it violence. I promise.
You are an idiot. You are justified to use violence to protect yourself and others when confronted with violence. You are allowed to use deadly force when someone enters your home uninvited.
This is useful. But name calling is childish. Your next assertion is a general principle in some law, but simplistic. And your final assertion is false as stated and not really relevant to the discussion. The issue isn’t whether someone walking to the corner store, or sitting in their home has a right to defend themselves; rather it is what tactics are best for the entire movement.
Will the participants be safer by responding to violence with violence? Will the aims of the movement be furthered through the use of violence? The answer to both of these questions is no. This is so blatantly obvious that I must question the motivation of all who propose violence.
If someone wants a little-boy, feel-good experience by punching back, does that give them the right to more greatly endanger those around them? Do they have the right to derail through violence the hopes of us all so they can get a buzz?
It’s unfortunate that a movement such as this can attract some who enjoy violence, and from which they hope to derive some form of satisfaction. But it is the agent provocateurs who pose the greatest danger: For they know with clear certainty that the surest, fastest way to discredit and destroy what has here begun is to cause it to turn violent.
OWS=violence
If you were actually concerned about violent people, you would be working on discovering them and exposing them rather than harassing people that obviously have no interest in it. There is no violence on this forum except for your continued assault on normal conversation. Go ahead, lash out like a child because I said something you don't like. I would expect nothing less.
Listen Dick, I never even said anything to you, Dick. Your mother must have had a crystal ball when she named you, Dick. Why don't you give a shot to stop being a dick, Dick.
no prob suka :P
Violence is only ever legitimate in Self Defense or in the protection of others who are being wrongly attacked and cannot defend themselves.
Do not listen to those who would promote violence as a just and proper tool. It is not.
do those categories not apply to us? if not to us, do those not apply to those who are being more directly exploited by the Euroamerican economic system in the global South?
Is some one pounding on your face right now?
No? Then self defense does not apply.
What if the country i live in is killing thousands by the day and condemning the planet to ecological genocide? Oh sorry that's just progress I guess that doesn't count as violence...
Should Occupy Use Violence? No.
— Should the Cops? No.
today you can speak freely. no moderation policy for sundays!!!
Zizek said something along the lines of the following:
The dominant liberal mindset says that violence in response to oppression is never justified but sometimes necessary. Counterposed to this is a conviction present in most radical analysis that violence in response to oppression is always justified but only sometimes necessary.
Should Occupy use violence - no.
Should Occupy trample over the rights of others, even the 1% - no.
Should the police use measured response to prevent Occupy from trampling over the rights of others - yes.
Essentially you are saying this: Do a few incredibly wealth individuals have the right to perpetrate genocidal violence of the majority of the world? Yes. Do people have the right to oppose them? No. Does the state have the right to use violence to defend the rights of the wealthy to perpetrate their violence? Yes.
No. Two wrongs don't make a right. It's a quick and dangerous race to the bottom. We can solve our problems working with and through government. I know this is strictly forbidden in OWS land. So be it. But I don't think it's necessary to trample the rights of others to solve our problems.
Well, in the movie When Harold Met Maude, Maude, the activist tells Harold she used a strong umbrella against violent cops to protect herself. I think all protestors should bring & use a long strong umbrella to defend themselves against violent cops. We need to defend ourselves. Everyone should watch this movie. Maude is OWS. Solidarity.
There's all kinds of protective gear on the market. Bullet proof vests, gas masks, helmets, goggles, steel toed boots, knee pads, elbow pads, shoulder pads. I could go on but you get the idea.
Should OWS use violence ? My answer is NO !!! Police and politics know how to handle violence. The police has protocols for this. They don’t know how to handle non violence protests. If OWS would use violence and plan violence, politics and the police will simply declare OWS as a criminal or terroristic organization. They will declare that OWS is a threat of national stability. And politics has control of the news media. If this happens, police and politics have laws on their side to get rid of OWS. And when OWS would use violence, things will get out of hand very easily, you will not be able to control this. I don’t say it is easy, but when OWS keeps his protests non violence, you have the law on your side. Let the police be the violent one, they will make mistakes and this will make OWS more powerful. It is all about public relations. Violence during protests will happen, fights between police and people will aggravate during time. But if OWS is really planning violence, it will be the end of OWS. Non violence actions, non violence protests takes a long time, but history proved that it will make changes in a more stable way.
I agree that violence should not be used except for self defense, but I would say that protests, even non-violent and protracted, will not achieve anything unless there is clear and widely popular agreement about the end result.
OWS has no leaders, no organization and no clear goals - that kind of protests are nothing more than a wasteful way to fail.
With organization, agreement and education, voting can take care of the problem without any protests. This is the only viable strategy.
I completely agree with your analysis regarding state violence, especially on it's own citizens. But in all of recorded history, it has always been this way. How do you propose to change it?
honestly if you're going to use violence against the state, you gotta be able to mobilize more than 30,000 people on your best day. Might also help if another state was funneling arms to the rebel army... anyway point is you gotta be in a position to survive a sustained counter-attack from the most feared and technologically advanced army in the world.
My own personal view is that you get a lot further through non-violence anyway, but even in spite of that, at this point violence would be suicide.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
"Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
Yes let's patiently allow our own eyes to be cut out. This will leave only the aggressor with sight. Then maybe they will realize that they were being jerks and give us our eyes back.
Who cut out your eyes?
This is the man who claims Black Bloc is out of control. To be fair, I love them both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e75I4ysssoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eknuqWQ4-Mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9os1GFuWJ0
Does some police being violent justify OWS violence?
Does Black Bloc violence justify police violence toward OWS?
No, and No. I agree with the text of the post, that violence from the government or government representatives does not deserve immunity. I really don't like how the thread title sounds like an attempt to justify violence from activists.
The mere existence of the cops is violence per se. They don't have to "use" it. They embody it by their very existence.
Cop violence starts with the fact that they're financed by theft (taxes).
As long as there is money, which is at the very least a convenient method of book keeping, we will probably have to tax ourselves, even under the circumstances of the most democratic state imaginable (which I acknowledge is not what we have now). Even the Communist Manifesto calls for progressive taxation. The problem (right now) is that our present tax system is the opposite of progressive. It is clearly regressive if the super rich are paying less than the rest of us as a percentage of their wealth (ie, not only income).
There is no such thing as taxing ourselves. You can't rob yourself. Taxation is theft & needs to be done away with.
Any community can decide that for the good of the community as a whole all the individuals who are part of that community will set aside a specific part of their personal wealth for the good of the community as a whole. This can be done as a matter of collective choice rather than as a matter of individual decision making. When it is done collectively the collective (the community as a whole) may enforce its will upon individual members. This is essentially what tithing is in religious communities.
Thbe problem with bourgeois democracies is that they are imperfect democracies in that while they are putatively democratic in the political sphere that democracy does not extend to the economic sphere, which are not only class based, but which, by their nature, tend to undermine what democracy exists in the political sphere. But a classless society might just as easily decide to use a proportion of each individuals personal wealth for the good of the community as a whole. Genuine progressive taxation is a step in the direction of classlessness as it would be a small step toward equalizing individual wealth.
So the community can decide to rob its members. That's what you're really saying. The problem is that the community has no more rights than its individual members. If the individual has no right to force others to part with their money a group of individuals doesn't have that right either.
A community is a community. It is an identity. Everyone in the community is a member of the community and those members as a collective, can decide to do whatever they like with their resources. For example, virtually all organized clubs, groups, organizations or societies have some kind of basis for membership and typically charge dues to finance the activities of the organization, which are, after all, a kind of tax. Many organizations even have a sliding scale of dues, which amounts to a kind of progressive taxation. I don't know of anyone who belongs to any voluntary organization that would characterized such a dues assessment as robbery. It's a condition of the organization to which they choose to belong being able to function.
I will grant you that it is more complicated in modern society where it is essentially extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to opt out of any particular nation state in which we reside. Nevertheless, there are all kinds of commons from which we all benefit and for which there is a price to maintain. Probably the most obvious for which few people would support the absolute privatization (which is to say nearly everyone accepts as part of the commons) would be roads and highways. Some resources are necessary in order to maintain the commons. Even conservatives acknowledge that resources are necessary to provide for the common defense, which among other things is provided for in the Constitution. The common agreement that everyone has a responsibility to provide for the common defense can hardly be characterized as robbery. These sorts of arrangements exist in even the most primative of cultures, where no clear class distinctions exist and before a money system has evolved. In such situations there might typically be an obligation to contribute time, personal weapons or similar resources for the common defense. Such an obligation can hardly be characterized as robbery. It is what is necessary in order for the community to function at all as a community. In modern society with the development of a money system such contributions are more indirect, but the contribution of money as an obligation to assure that a community is able to function is no more robbery than is the obligation to contribute time for the same purpose in a more primative culture.
It is not a matter of force. Very few people in contemporary society are in a position to be able to function at all without some recourse to using the commons, whether that is walking down a street, using a public highway or expecting the state to be able to protect us from military agression. Since we all benefit to a greater or lesser degree from using the commons, we all have some obligation to maintain the commons. That is not robbery. That is called being a responsible member of society. Indeed, not to make such a contribution would be robbery. It would amount to using the commons without making some contribution to its maintenance.
You don't seem to get the difference between voluntary payments for services & forcing one to pay (taxes, theft). I'm happy to pay for protection from a private entity I can fire. Same with roads & other goods & services. Look at it this way. A business can't take people's money by force & justify this by saying they provide services. The govt can't morally work that way either. Ends don't justify means. It doesn't matter if the money goes to feed the orphans if it's taken by force it's theft.
By definition anything a state does is by force. That's what a state is, after all: that aspect of society that has a sanctioned and consensual monopoly on violence. This ultimately is a function of the existence social classes. That is, in the absence of social classes, no state, no institution with a sanctioned monopoly on violence. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly the case that even in a classless society the people (the collective) would decide that certain expenditures were necessary for the maintenance of the commons, for the maintenance of the community as a whole. It is concievable that there might be antisocial elements that would refuse a voluntary contribution to the commons. Exactly how the rest of the community would deal with that remains to be seen as we are a very long way from that. Meanwhile, a highly progressive income tax would tend to move us toward a classless society. Personally I'm for confuscating all wealth above 3X the poverty level. That would certainly solve all the fiscal crises of our society and would only be fair since, speaking of stealing the capitalists steal from us every day of our working lives by not compensating us for 100% of the wealth we create. A confescatory wealth tax would only just begin to even that score and start to get back all the wealth that the capitalists have stolen from us for centuries.
People benefit from the commons. Not to pay for those benefits amounts to stealing from the rest of the community that is paying for those benefits, not the other way round.
Yes, the state is force that's why it's a bad idea.
A classless society is a fantasy anyway. People have differing levels of ability & drive. There will never be equality nor is it desirable. Let the more able have the motivation to achieve & lead. Stealing their money will only make us all equally poor. Ending their govt granted privileges sounds great, but that's not what you really advocate since you want the govt to be powerful. The elites will always control that powerful govt & you it against us.
While we have to go to prehistoric times to find them, anthropologists agree that there were not always social classes, which is to say that, consciously or not, social classes are a human invention. There are all kinds of examples of human inventions becoming outmoded. Certainly class society is at the root of exploitation and opression so that any effort to eradicate exploitation and opression must ultimately be a struggle to eradicate the social class structure which is at the root of opression and exploitation.
Government is not an abstraction nor is it the same as the state which is also not an abstraction. The question is, whose class interests does a particular state serve. I have absolutely no interest in strengthening a bourgeois state. Indeed I would look forward to its collapse. But even if the bourgeois state were to collapse entirely that would not necessarily mean the collapse and end of the bourgeoisie as a social class and the working class would have to use force (which is to say the mechanisms of state power) to rein in and discipline the power of the bourgeoisie, but they could not use the mechanisms of the bourgeois state to do that. To do that we will need entirely new mechanisms of state power, as different from the existing Constitution as the existing Constitution is from feudalism.
And we are not in any sense talking about stealing money. What we are talking about is taking back what is ours. The bourgeoisie has stolen our labor power from us every day for a thousand years and to level the playing field we need to take it back.
So if we do away with police then we will have a utopia? I wonder....
No, it's the other way around, when we have a genuinely classless society then neither police nor the state will be necessary any longer. Conversely, the way we will know that our society is moving towards classlessness is when the police, military, prisons and all the instruments of coercion become increasingly irrelevant.
No, it's the other way around, when we have a genuinely classless society then neither police nor the state will be necessary any longer.
lol I didn't know LSD was still on the streets!
As with the issue of unemployment, to view crime as a matter of individual behavior is to ignore why crime statistics, like unemployment statistics, are elastic. Why is it that in some periods unemployment is greater than in other periods? If unemployment is based solely on personal character, what is to explain these mass fluctuations in personal character? The same is true with regards to crime. If crime in based solely on personal character what explains the fluctuations in character as the crime rate varies?
Some people seem to get off on the fact the world is messed up, like they wouldn't know what to do if they weren't constantly looking over their shoulder while walking to the store.
Its true there are actually some people who haven't lost hope for a better existence; you should really hit a pasture, make like a horse, and much some sleepy grass, or maybe pop a few Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, it might just knock you out of that cynical hole.
Streets? ha. Dude its not 1960 anymore, two words: Silk Road.
You leave out human nature. You Marxist/anarchist/ utopian retards always do.
Human nature is as historically specific as any other aspect of human society. After all, human sacrifice used to be part of human nature. Co-habitation used to be considered profoundly immoral. Certainly the human habit of co-habitation has not changed, except to become more widespread, but what has changed is social attitudes about co-habitation and it is much more widely accepted today than was the case a generation ago. So human nature changes all the time. Much of what is characterized as "crime" in our culture is class based. Robbery, for example is generally a crime of the poor against the rich in our culture. When the rich do essentially the same thing in its relationship to the working class and the poor, that is not considered a crime, so what matters is public attitudes toward such behavior and such "nature" not the nature or behavior itself.
You leave out reactionary heroics. Why do you always do that?
Nothing reactionary here. You leave out human nature. You leftists always think you can completely change it. But throughout history even horrendous violence hasn't changed it. You won't either.
And you make assumptions about political affinity, when circumstances have made it abundantly clear that left/right has been taken out of this equation, at least in the presidential stakes.
There is simply no fundamental difference between the parties. Both are bought and paid for by the same corporate lobbyists.
I agree that there is no difference between the parties. Most regulars here don't. But left/right is what it is about at the present .
Meaning election time? Left/right is the last divisive tool the corporate-owned media has. Simply ignore that for what it is .
Okay. One more time. Left/right is part of the culture. Ignoring it I present will do nothing but assure the election of the left/right.
It is part of the divisive culture. I guess it's hard to wriggle out from under the boot of oppressive past habits. Good luck with that, my friend...
Wow you are out there.
It seems rather obvious to me. It's just that for the most part on a day to day basis, we don't tend to think about what the police and military are all about. They are really those institutions of society that have a sanctioned monopoly on violence. For the most part we tend to buy into the notion that the police exist to "protect and serve", but to protect and serve whom from what? Antisocial elements? What constitutes an antisocial element? Fracturing and bundling mortgages and then foreclosing would strike me a pretty antisocial, but what is being done about that? When a cop pulls you over for alledgedly violating some traffic ordinance, we tend to defer to them regardless of whether or not we actually believe we have done anything wrong. Why? They have the gun whether they choose to use it or not, violence is embodied in the police force as a function of their existence as an institution.
but i thought god made this country. don't fight god. god does not like it.
Good luck! Remember Tiananmen Square. Your body won't stop many tanks.
Free your mind, it can stop tanks.
I want to free my mind, and in general, my mind does feel free. I attribute this feeling of "free mind" to my love of the teachings of Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, Bob Marley, and "the golden rule".
But exactly how do others define a "free mind"?
according CIA revenues, the violence in protests movements are collaborates with some group of individuals who start the fire between the police and demonstration. it will be applicated in everywhere in the world, including here. And would used against you, by demonizing police forces and tightening up the civil right laws. Dont get aggressive Dunno. Be a pally. free peanut butter'n'jelly snacks and adventures of the jail house
Should OWS use violence? NO Does the police have the lawful right to evict OWS out of public parks and private property by any reasonable means necessary? Yes
[Removed]