End of #OccupyWallStreet: conflict over drummers

this just in (from folks working with community relations):

OWS is over after Tuesday:

Friends, mediation with the drummers has been called off. It has gone on for more than 2 weeks and it has reached a dead end. The drummers formed a working group called Pulse and agreed to 2 hrs/day at times during the mediation, and more recently that changed to 4 hrs/day. It's my feeling that we may have a fighting chance with the community board if we could indeed limit drumming and loud instrumentation to 12-2pm and 4-6pm, however that isn't what's happening.

Last night the drumming was near continuous until 10:30pm at night. Today it began again at 11am. The drummers are fighting amongst themselves, there is no cohesive group. There is one assemblage called Pulse that organized most of the drummers into a group and went to GA for formal recognition and with a proposal.

Unfortunately there is one individual who is NOT a drummer but who claims to speak for the drummers who has been a deeply disruptive force, attacking the drumming rep during the GA and derailing his proposal, disrupting the community board meeting, as well as the OWS community relations meeting. She has also created strife and divisions within the POC caucus, calling many members who are not 'on her side' "Uncle Tom", "the 1%", "Barbie" "not Palestinian enough" "Wall Street politicians" "not black enough" "sell-outs", etc. People have been documenting her disruptions, and her campaign of misinformation, and instigations. She also has a documented history online of defamatory, divisive and disruptive behavior within the LGBT (esp. transgender) communities. Her disruptions have made it hard to have constructive conversations and productive resolutions to conflicts in a variety of forums in the past several days.

At this point we have lost the support of allies in the Community Board, and the State Senator and city electeds who have been fighting the city to stave off our eviction, get us toilets, etc. On Tuesday is a Community Board vote, which will be packed with media cameras and community members with real grievances. We have sadly demonstrated to them that we are unable to collectively 1) keep our space and surrounding areas clean and sanitary, 2) keep the park safe, 3) deal with internal conflict and enforce the Good Neighbor Policy that was passed by the General Assembly.

Whether or not you personally feel that the support of the community board and local residents and their reps is needed to maintain our occupation, many of us believe that maintaining Liberty Square (aka Zuccotti Park) as a flagship and nerve center for our movement right now is in fact critical to our efforts that are much bigger picture, longer term, more revolutionary than the internal conflicts that are consuming too much energy right now.

We need to take this seriously, and be clear that if we can't deal with conflict and self-organizing then we are facing eviction very soon (this week), and the allies that helped turn out mass numbers at the last one will not be around this time, nor will the press be supportive. Additionally, Bloomberg released a statement a few days ago that said that he / the City plans to crack down on any violations as of this week. Once we lose community and ally support at Tuesday's vote, the door is wide open for an eviction.

What to do? We need an all hands-on-deck clean-up and everyone sharing responsibility for the Good Neighbor Policy, including enforcement of 12-2pm and 4-6pm drumming hours. (While recognizing that the community board has been firm that they can only support 2 hrs/day of drumming). We should also start serious conversations internally about what this movement might I look like without Zuccotti Park / Liberty Square. How can we set ourselves up for continued organizing and momentum without an active occupation? I don't write this to be dramatic, it's a serious question. If so much of our organizing time currently (for many of us, 20 hrs a day) is going to putting out fires and maintaining the space, what does it look like if we lose the space?

For more on the drumming issue check this link.

Comments

[MODERN1ST]

How pathetic is this? If a GA can't even come to and enforce a decision on what is ground it "occupies" how can it ever dream of becoming some sort of constituent power? Time to get serious people. COMBAT LIBERALISM.

[Jonathan Skinner]

to detourn Lefebvre: "Today more than ever, the class struggle is inscribed in sound. Indeed, it is that struggle alone which prevents abstract sound from taking over the whole planet and papering over all differences . . . 'Change life! Change society!' These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate sound. A lesson to be learned from the Soviet constructivists of 1920-30, and from their failure, is that new social relationships call for a new sound, and vice versa."

[Matthew Black]

Hi,

Long-time reader, first-time poster.

is it possible to contact the working group which sent this message and ask them to send more information and clarification? I know a lot of people are concerned about this, but there seem to be some logical holes in the account.

First, between paragraph 2 and 3: why is that, if there is only one disruptive (are we to read, 'only one uncooperative?') individual of particular concern, the drumming is continuing as before in contradiction to what the CB has requested? Also, the end of paragraph 4 lists three criteria that the CB has asked for (sanitation, safety, and generally effective mediation) and that are not currently being met, but the drumming problem only seems related to the last criterion.

I agree wholeheartedly with mediation's attempts to sort this out and I'm sure they're exhausted and overworked, but I think it would be useful to have some clarification here, particularly since the message seems likely to spread.

[D]

How about you idiots just pack it up and go home (maybe get a job?).

[Daniel Kauffman]

A charge often leveled against Western Civilization is its past history as regards indigenous populations.

So how does OWS fare on this issue? They have occupied Zuccotti Park and the street people who used to use it the street vendors who plied their wares there are? Gone

The indigenous local population who used the Green Square as a source of spiritual refreshment in the midst of the Concrete Jungle have been forced out. Passersby and local residents who have no part in the wrongs OWS purports to demonstrate against have been
Harrased spit upon and degraded.

In the Past the displacement of indigenous populations was justified on the tennants that those who drove them out had "better uses" for the land they stole

What is the Moral Justification for OWS???

[Deadcountry.blogspot.com]

More than one commenter here has weighed in on what OWS should do after the new wears off, and now one questions its justificarion outright, yet it seems simple to me: these protesters are only one step removed from, and in fact in a sense are, the "street people". Many of these comments are dripping in class predudice of a sort, as if there were spoiled college kids on the one hand and homeless, foreclosed in more ways than one drug and alcohol addled bums (now elevated to "indigenous people" status!) when in fact we're all the same; we're all in this together-- the college age kid is as unemployed as the bearded old sot who'd be in that park anyway. My point is, these are Hoovervilles of a sort, places where people have been pushed to collectively, not discrete segments, some of which "don't belong".== Bob Allen

[Daniel Kauffman]

LOL no one got "elevated" to any status they hold that status because they were there before the Occupation which BTW is WHY it can be called an Occupation, Occupations by definition are when an inhabited area is subjagated to conquest by an alien invasion.

Yeah the Occuppiers are just like the menally challenged homeless man in Oskland who was pepper sprayed, beaten and driven out of the park there.

Of course you sneer and talk about drunks and drug addicts which makes it OK that the street vendors who used to make their living there have been driven out, or that the locals and passerbys are harrassed attack and spat on BTW what does being in the Coast Guard have to do with crony capitalism??

as for college age kids and bearded old sots? One difference is they youngsters usually have some place they could go they are their because they choose to not because they have nowhere else to go.

[Xastewie]

Sign Up At The New Revolution Earth Social Media Site And Help Support The Occupiers. The Occupy Movement is our chance to create equality. If we all get involved or at least participate we will grow and we really could make a difference.....http://www.rev-earth.org.

[Robert Allen]

Daniel, I'm amazed at your command of historical materialism, much like Ward Churchill was amazed at the concern of bourgeois pundits' response to "Chickens Coming Home to Roost" wherein he made his infamous Little Eichmanns" remark about WTC victims: "I didn't know there were so many Marxists in New York, (suddenly) concerned about the fate of poor and working people".