Claus Neergaard: NoiseNetworkConnections v1

Claus Neergaard: NoiseNetworkConnections v1

Filed under: arts, science, Claus Neergaard, multitude, NoiseNetworkConnections v1

The Fight for ‘Real Democracy’ at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street

The Encampment in Lower Manhattan Speaks to a Failure of Representation

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

MICHAEL HARDT is Professor of Literature at Duke University. ANTONIO NEGRI is former Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua and the University of Paris 8. They are the authors of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.

Demonstrations under the banner of Occupy Wall Street resonate with so many people not only because they give voice to a widespread sense of economic injustice but also, and perhaps more important, because they express political grievances and aspirations. As protests have spread from Lower Manhattan to cities and towns across the country, they have made clear that indignation against corporate greed and economic inequality is real and deep. But at least equally important is the protest against the lack — or failure — of political representation. It is not so much a question of whether this or that politician, or this or that party, is ineffective or corrupt (although that, too, is true) but whether the representational political system more generally is inadequate. This protest movement could, and perhaps must, transform into a genuine, democratic constituent process.

The political face of the Occupy Wall Street protests comes into view when we situate it alongside the other “encampments” of the past year. Together, they form an emerging cycle of struggles. In many cases, the lines of influence are explicit. Occupy Wall Street takes inspiration from the encampments of central squares in Spain, which began on May 15 and followed the occupation of Cairo’s Tahrir Square earlier last spring. To this succession of demonstrations, one should add a series of parallel events, such as the extended protests at the Wisconsin statehouse, the occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens, and the Israeli tent encampments for economic justice. The context of these various protests are very different, of course, and they are not simply iterations of what happened elsewhere. Rather each of these movements has managed to translate a few common elements into their own situation.

Filed under: occupy, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, The Fight for 'Real Democracy' at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street

Three Views on Demands

“The Party of Wall Street knows all too well that when profound political and economic questions are transformed into cultural issues they become unanswerable.” -David Harvey
http://davidharvey.org/2011/10/rebels-on-the-street-the-party-of-wall-street-meets-its-nemesis/

“But I think that this openness is precisely what is great about these protests. It means that precisely a certain vacuum opened the fundamental dissatisfactions in the system. The vacuum simply means open space for thinking, for new freedom, and so on. Let’s not fill in this vacuum too quickly.” -Slavoj Zizek (unedited transcript)
http://www.khukuritheory.net/zizek-preserve-the-vacuum/

“While it’s definitely a good idea to charge the capitalists, taxing the rich as the maximum program sets us up for social development by the state. The occupation movement gives us the potential to independently develop the class.” -Asad Haider and Salar Mohandesi
http://viewpointmag.com/everybody-talks-about-the-weather/

Filed under: occupy, David Harvey, demands, occupy together, occupy wall street, ows, Slavoj Zizek, Viewpoint Magazine

Day 47: Poll

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Filed under: occupy, occupy together, occupy wall street, ows, poll

Occupy Wall Street Radio: 11.03.11

• the Oakland General Strike
• The People vs. Goldman Sachs with Chris Hedges, Cornel West
• the mainstream media
• protesters reject plea bargain
• CRASS zine
• upcoming events

via http://archive.wbai.org/show1.php?showid=owsr

Filed under: occupy, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Oakland General Strike, occupy wall street, Occupy Wall Street Radio, WBAI

Michel de Broin: Black Whole Conference (2006)

72 chairs, 400cm in diameter

The installation consists of a large sphere composed of an assemblage of chairs. The legs are attached to one another, bringing the chairs together. In this spherical conference room there is no central position, all the chairs float in solidarity with each other. They operate as an immune system – protecting themselves by blocking and kicking out their surroundings. As a massive object in the gallery space, the sphere acts as a centre of gravity around which the rest orbits. The reorganization of matter derives from a ‘big bang’ where the ancient order of the conference room has blown out and reconfigured into a ‘utopic’ geometrical endosystem.

http://www.micheldebroin.org/projects/bw/index.html

Filed under: arts, Black Whole Conference, Michel de Broin

Solidarity: Oakland General Strike

A Photo Essay: http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3452

Filed under: activism, movements, occupy, general strike, occupy oakland

Behind the News: 10.28.11

update: occupywallst.org just posted an essay by Alex Vitale titled Rule of Law vs. the Forces of Order

• sociologist Alex Vitale on cops and protest

• journalist Sarah Jaffe on OWS

Vitale offers a valuable overview of different policing tactics from 1960s-present.

via http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S111028

Filed under: activism, occupy, Alex Vitale, Behind the News, Doug Henwood, occupy wall street, police, Sarah Jaffe

Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs in the Occupy Movement

via American Leftist

Filed under: activism, occupy, infiltration, occupy wall street, police

Occupy the Ghetto

You can either love or hate Jesse Jackson, but he long ago called for a Marshall Plan for America’s urban cities. It has been brought up by the President or any of the other democratic nominees for the presidency in the 2008 election. But this is not on the “occupation” agenda, but it would not only condemn Wall Street, but more appropriately, condemn the “occupiers” and their parents. As the Kerner Commission noted in 1968, “What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” Simply put, by not being enraged by the condition of the “hood”, the “occupiers” and their parents have implicitly condoned the conditions there. Of course, now that the unemployment rate affecting “Main Street” and not just King Drive, there is a certifiable crisis and something must be done about it.

Bryan K. Bullock

http://www.voxunion.com/?p=4592

The Occupy Movement hasn’t formed a structural critique that could understand all crises as symptomatic of a common underlying problem.  This lack of deep analysis and historical contextualization is understandable, but it does leave the movement vulnerable to internal divisions, so the benefit of developing such a critique is considerable.

Filed under: activism, movements, occupy, Bryan K. Bullock, dialectical materialism, Occupy the Hood, occupy wall street, racism, Wilhelm Reich