Written this morning to the Chapel Hill fb page:
hi. i live in raleigh, my son in ch invited me to the organizing meeting for "occupy chapel hill," maybe i'll get there (i didn't), there might be a take-mom-to-the-hospital activity 2day (there was). i have some points i'll present in the form of a military planning hierarchy (grr): tactical, strategic, political.
tactics:
1. the occupy (& demo) proto-movement will only become powerful if it endures & grows through the miserable winter. it will be the test of commitment to the whatever-it-is & will have a chance to grow in the spring in the crucial election yr. obviously a chapel hill "permanent" presence will have less impact than in ny, but the demonstration must demonstrate that it has legs. once started it should be planned (planned!) to continue until - ... ... "something" - otherwise it is a wimp movement without legs.
2. if there is to be such a long-term demo in ch it must be initially attempted within parameters negotiated with the ch gov incl the police. there must be a committee (! - organized!) to interface with "them" - them being everybody else. permits must be sought. the police must be directly & publicly in the loop. cops are friends when they're not enemies. even when they are actively repressing/enforcing the liason committee must be negotiating.
3. security, infrastructure, supply must be considered & planned for first while the weather is still good.
4. any law-breaking must only be undertaken for strategic purposes. public scofflaw activity must be repressed by ourselves rather than the cops. no public drug use, find minors & protect them, no property damage, keep it clean, control wierdness, etc.
5. more of this kind of nuts&bolts stuff.
strategy
this is not yet a movement, for it to become one it must have goals. the goals can be anything: "civility," different approach to economics, "peace," "tolerance," etc. or more specific: youth party development, electoral college reform, make rich people do stuff... the ch contingent or any other place where this kind of action is contemplated can put out its own demands, the best of them may go national. if this becomes a movement it will become national & have potential appeal to the vast majority of people in this country who do not & will not participate. those people must feel some kind of kinship & solidarity with the demo people otherwise we remain a funny minority.
we see in egypt the youth have not coalesced into a formal party & they are frozen out. there must be a structure to deal with "the structure" otherwise one throws out a bad actor & the machine grinds on. in a revolution a faction takes over the admin machine & runs it according to its sectarian principles. if the admin is abolished what we get is instant anarchy in which the weapon wielders rule. think think think therefore. plan plan plan. what, why, how.
political
what to do if successful. what would success mean? then what? what to do with opponents? how to turn opponents into neutrals or adherents? how do we want to live? how do we want other people to live? what do we want to allow? what do we want to prohibit? how do we enforce stuff? what do we do with problem people? how do we deal with life & death?
people have been trying to work with these issues since ancient times. attempt is better than idle dreams. dreams are not nothing. they are better than nothing. go & try, maybe something good will happen.
governance, personal responsibility, etc.
if the "revolution" is to be accomplished there has to be a change of heart in individuals. revolutionary forms can be enforced but the heart does not respond to force. the heart melts, that is the feel of the change. if people are to be allowed to be susceptible to change of heart they have to be comfortable in their bodies: pain minimized, adequate nutrition, degrees of freedom of activity, etc. the change we are looking for is the golden rule: everyone cares about everyone as much as they care about themselves, or pointed in that direction.
the first thing then is taking care of personal stuff as much as possible. "we" must be the truly self-reliant people. "they" are the ones who take advantage of people and call it virtue. next is helping everybody else take care of themselves, thus is government born.
there are only 2 governing processes: force or bureaucracy. without government there is anarchy which always devolves into the rule of force by dictator/gang leaders/warlords. the thing about bureaucracy is that it is boring, time consuming, nobody wants to do it except the people who want to. following one's bliss is great, but bureaucratic government is like ass wiping, if you hired someone to do it for you maybe it doesn't come out the way you wanted it to. so the revolution will have everyone doing a lot of necessary things that they wouldn't otherwise want to do. everyone wanting to do things that they don't want to do. because if we hire people to do it for us because we have "better" stuff to do we get what we get: a reiteration of the current structure. martinets & enforcers & prigs & meeting junkies & yes-people running things, money playing angles everywhere, egomaniacs of every type prowling around looking for opportunities.
until a revolutionary governing structure that includes everyone emerges to replace the delegated-reprepresentative model the bureaucratic model will persist: we will pay people to do things for us that we do not want to do ourselves. efforts must be made to "tame" and "democratize" the bureaucracy & its apparatus while we await the evolutionary development of an as yet unarticulated system that more nearly approximates the golden rule in action. at this time the thing to do with that is to want it, even if we don't yet know what it is.
