10/22/2011, 4:15 pm
Comrades! To the Barricades! The Glorious World of Next Tuesday is in danger!
From New York Magazine:
No, No, NO! Napoleon, say it ain't so!
Party officials are still trying to determine if Harper is a racist or if the "big black chick" is a fascist.
Ah...such warm memories of the original Red October...
That's right! All of these other bastards aren't part of the 99%! Once they leave, then we will be the real 99% of what's left!
Wait a minute there, comrade. Are you suggesting that some of the people at Occupy Wall Street are demanding that somebody else give them stuff? Like stuff they didn't earn? That freeloaders make life miserable for everyone else? You are skating very close to a denouncement for deviating into a capitalistic concept...
Yes, Zonkers. The important thing about creating the dictatorship of the proletariate is deciding which proletarian is going to be dictator. Good Prole. You can have a Scooby Snack.
From New York Magazine:
All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective.
No, No, NO! Napoleon, say it ain't so!
It began, as it so often does, with a drum circle. The ten-hour groove marathons weren't sitting well with the neighborhood's community board, the ironically situated High School of Economics and Finance that sits on the corner of Zuccotti Park, or many of the sleep-deprived protesters.
“[The high school] couldn't teach,” explained Josh Nelson, a 27-year-old occupier from Nebraska. “And we've had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.”
But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly.
“They're imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people's opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn't.”
Party officials are still trying to determine if Harper is a racist or if the "big black chick" is a fascist.
But...but...all goods are to be held in common...All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.
But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You're going to break my fucking tent, get that shit off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.
Other organizers were more blunt. “If you don't want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.” Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We're all big boys and girls. Let's do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children." The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren't here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”
Ah...such warm memories of the original Red October...
“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”
That's right! All of these other bastards aren't part of the 99%! Once they leave, then we will be the real 99% of what's left!
Another argument broke out next to the pile of appropriated belongings, growing taller by the minute. A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They've taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn't your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.”
And as I spoke to Michael Glaser, a 26-year-old Chicagoan helping lead winter preparation efforts, a physical fight broke out between a cleaner and a camper just feet from us.
“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people's lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can't kick them out.”
Wait a minute there, comrade. Are you suggesting that some of the people at Occupy Wall Street are demanding that somebody else give them stuff? Like stuff they didn't earn? That freeloaders make life miserable for everyone else? You are skating very close to a denouncement for deviating into a capitalistic concept...
In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant."
Yes, Zonkers. The important thing about creating the dictatorship of the proletariate is deciding which proletarian is going to be dictator. Good Prole. You can have a Scooby Snack.
