[]kreuzer007 27 points 21 hours ago (42|15)

No news coverage :( Also a lot of passerby's kept making snide remarks like "I wish I had time to protest" or "if their yelling wakes the baby its not the cops they'll have to deal with."
[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 42 points 21 hours ago (59|17)

People hate protesters in America. What's funny is that I get the sense that the organizers of this protest hate protesters, too, judging by how out of their way they went to make sure they didn't look like or attract protesters to the event. This protest is a very odd one in that respect. It's like people who hate protesters decided they needed to organize a protest. So many contradictions. Honestly, it has a real reactionary, right wing, selfish bent to it. Sort of a "don't spy on me because I don't deserve it" vibe. No connections being made to other people who are being surveilled, for instance, and actively pushing away poor and working class people by rejecting our experience with surveillance. It certainly turned me off to participating.

[]kreuzer007 13 points 21 hours ago (17|4)

I hear you. Although the turnout was greater than I expected, it was meager when you consider the size of NYC. Not to be a naysayer, but I'm afraid that the lesson politicians will learn from today is that public opinion is largely on their side. I'm not sure this was organized by largely right wing people. I'm not sure it wasn't, but I'm curious where you see that. I feel like this is an issue that both right and left should be able to agree on. The NSA policies potentially threaten the poor, the working class, unions, minorities, young people who use the internet, and gun owners. Its also big government, and its very expensive. I knew when I went that these were people I probably don't agree with politically. In fact I probably disagree with most people on this subreddit politically also. But if its upholding the rule of law, the constitution, and the basic principles of liberty and common sense, I'm here shoulder to shoulder with anyone who can say the same.
[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 14 points 20 hours ago (26|12)

Where I get the right wing, reactionary vibe is in the dress code, for instance. And, although I did see some lip service given to stop and frisk at one point early on, in general what I kept hearing was that this was about the NSA spying and that's it. Well, we poor and working class people experience a lot of surveillance that's different from the relatively minor intrusion that is being protested here. Think from the "justice" system (police in particular), various other public agencies like unemployment and the schools. Also, we are highly surveilled at work and when looking for employment. And, a complete rejection of including the state repression meted out to other movements, like Occupy or the anarchist movement over the last decade or so. The message I got from it is that a bunch of middle class kids didn't like their porn searches being catalogued and were asserting that they ought to be exempt. That they weren't criminals and therefore didn't deserve to be spied on. The rest of us? Well, maybe we did deserve it. It pushed me away. I saw a story last week in which a former Stasi officer was interviewed. He said that they were limited thanks to the tech at the time to listening to 40 people at once. That meant if you wanted a new one and you were already at 40, you had to drop someone out to make room. I feel like this movement is essentially saying that they want out and that someone else should be in. Well, as a long time activist who has experienced police repression and surveillance, I get the strong feeling that the person this movement would be willing to allow to be spied on is me, as well as poor people and working class people, especially people of color.

This movement had a chance to broaden the debate and make connections that would make space for a larger opposition to government and private spying. Instead, it consciously limited itself to a very narrow range of people, essentially white middle class professionals and college students. That definitely drove me away pretty quickly. I'm hearing other people say the same thing, so I know I'm not the only one.
[]redwhiskeredbubul 12 points 20 hours ago (13|1)

I didn't get the right-wing vibe from most of the people there, who seemed like young tech workers or artists. I did get it from the three guys with American flags and the stewards/ organizers chatting up TARU and feeding their own egos.
[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 11 points 19 hours ago (15|4)

The TARU comment is really troubling. I saw people repeatedly resist the criticism that local police are part of the surveillance structure and should be challenged as well. But if I'm hearing you right, here we have organizers talking openly with the protest cops (i.e., the red squad). Of course, there is another stunning irony in the organizers claiming to be nonviolent and yet cooperating with the notoriously violent NYPD. Doesn't sound too nonviolent to me.
[]kreuzer007 4 points 20 hours ago (7|1)

Agreed. I really can't say anything because you're pretty much right on everything. Any ideas on how we can fix this?
[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 23 points 19 hours ago (32|9)

Well, hopefully the dress code lesson has been learned. It not only pushes people away and is a general turn off, it's also completely unenforceable. One thing I got from the lead up to this is the feeling that a real sense of entitlement and unjustified expertise dominated the organizers' attitudes. By which I mean, white middle class men in particular got motivated to protest something and immediately imagined themselves to be experts in doing it. That and they generalized their own experience and views onto everyone else. White middle class people in general do this all the time. This was apparent in the dress code and demands for "normal"-ness in general (i.e., white middle class-ness), but also in the reactions I got from people to whom I suggested including police in general into the critique. After all, local police are thoroughly integrated into the spying structure through fusion centers and their own anti-terror units (trust me, I know this first hand). But there was a strong tendency to see criticism of the police as divisive, when in fact, support for the police was what was divisive. Again, we see here the tendency of white middle class people to assume that their experience with the police is everyone's experience with the police. The nonviolence issue, I think carried a lot of white middle class baggage with it (and, of course, completely ignored the history of past movements dealing with this question). This mostly came through the discussion of the image organizers wanted to project, but also via discussions around legality and following police instructions. Nonviolence was never defined and was therefore used politically to attack radicals or people viewed as "troublemakers" (generally, people who wanted to talk about what nonviolence meant). People would allege that everyone knew what nonviolence meant, but then I'd get a million different answers, including some people who said disobeying police orders like not to go in the street was a form of violence. So, this is a roundabout way of saying that I think the way to improve this is to include more people and more perspectives. Don't let middle class white people dominate this thing, because their experience is actually not everyone's experience on this issue. Far from it. Make connections beyond the NSA issue. People who experience the "justice" system, for instance, have important experience to share, including organizing experience, and when

they complain that middle class white people don't seem to give a shit about the state spying on them, they're right. I also found the general rejection of Occupy to be troubling in this respect. As documents continue to come out from the government about the levels of surveillance, disruption and repression that local and national cops organized against Occupy, it looks ridiculous to exclude them and their experience from this question of government spying. Mostly people seemed to reject occupy because the image they had of it was that it was made up of poor and working class people, and that it was of the left ("homeless people", "dirty hippies"). I'd also dump all talk of the dress code and probably the nonviolence code, too. Both are unenforceable, meaningless and divisive. The nonviolence code not only is a means of the middle class elements to attack radicals, but it also reflects a general middle class understanding of protest (a myth, really). Beyond that, it is a back door through which right wing paranoia about infiltrators, agents provocateurs and other mostly nonsense enters the movement. This protest has a weird mix of hatred of protesters and an Alex Jones sensibility about false flags and such. Underlying that is a real paralyzing idea, that protest is doomed from the get go because the government is omnipotent. Repeatedly I saw people denounce others as government agents or advocates of violence (anybody know anything about COINTELPRO?) merely because they were questioning the dominant ideology of the movement, despite being supporters. That is, it was a way to silence critical voices. Those are my initial thoughts about what to do next time.
[]kreuzer007 10 points 18 hours ago (13|3)

This is very well written. You should put this where more people could see it. Basically every sentence you just wrote is gold. No joke. I don't know if its obvious, but I'm white middle class, so I'm definitely very sheltered as far as what people are exposed to. It shocked me to read things like "The New Jim Crow," because things like that just never affected me. I'd like to know more though, and find out as much as I can. I also see your point about how the organizers sometimes seem like a "vanguard party" without any of the experience or credentials. But where do those people come from? Where did the people who did civil rights come from in the first place? Where were they trained? How did they know how to do what they did?
[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 9 points 17 hours ago (13|4)

Well, if we're going to look on this positively, it does seem like people are now open to asking questions and analyzing their experience, which is good. One way you get better is by doing it and then evaluating it. As for the experience of organizers, it's always complicated, but one way is by learning from others who did this stuff before you. In the case of the civil rights movement, they had a great depth of experience to draw on going back decades and decades. And, of course, there were also the rioters, who we too often forget. They had their place in the movement, too. That said, this is one of the reasons why pushing away Occupy protesters was a really bad idea. Not only could they have helped with this and brought their experience to the table, but they also went through many of these same debates (dress, nonviolence, tactics, etc). Seriously, it was like a total rerun of the first few weeks of the occupations. For my part, I've been doing this a long time and it's painful to see the same arguments rehashed over and over. I mean, the anti-glob movement debated this stuff and yet here we are again watching people make the same mistakes over and over. I'd add that people should be wary when someone speaks for anyone other than themselves, or expresses something as anything other than their personal opinion. People that use statements like "it will alienate people if..." or such normalizing statements should

be opposed and brought down to earth. They are really just a means of imposing hegemony and silencing debate. People should not use statements that appeal to the dominant ideology as if it is a proven fact. Example: "If we don't wear our best clothes for the protest we will be discredited." However, I should say that I know that people were banned from this thread merely for saying the same things I'm saying now (comments that are now getting upvotes and no ban, interestingly). That needs to stop. Some people are using these arguments as a way to purge the movement of people with valuable experience and ideas merely because they dare to question the operating logic or ideology.
[]kreuzer007 6 points 17 hours ago (6|0)

So its basically the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party all over again. I kid. But seriously, what happens now? Also, what arguments have you seen that have happened before that we haven't looked at here yet? Also, what was the result of the debates the occupy movement had? I'm sorry that I don't know much about any of this, but I'm curious to learn, and I think there might be others who don't know either.
[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 10 points 16 hours ago (15|5)

Lol. Well, it certainly operated like a purge in many ways. As for the other question, Occupy abandoned the dress code immediately. But the nonviolence debate was interesting. There was no clear consensus in part because the cops crushed occupy before it could really come to a consensus. There was a sizable group advocating for the old anti-glob solution of diversity of tactics. There were some who were opposed to that (see Chris Hedges' infamous Truth-Out rant against the black bloc, for example, or the even better debate between Hedges and CrimethInc on the question). But what was really interesting is the different practical definitions of nonviolence in that movement versus this one. In Occupy, nonviolence included some things that I don't think this movement agrees that it includes. For instance, in occupy nonviolence included disobedience, taking the streets and breaking laws (like, of course, property laws). Permits were rejected and public and private property were taken over. And the question of whether property destruction was nonviolent was openly debated and, as I said, unsettled when the movement was crushed, but there was no hegemony on the question. I point this out so that it can be clear that when people in this movement say things like "we all know what nonviolence is" that they're wrong. There really is no consensus on what nonviolence is. Not between movements and not historically. That's why it's important to view anyone who alleges this with a hefty amount of skepticism. It's this vagueness that allows it to be used politically. That is, to be used as a weapon against dissidents. Far too often merely questioning what people mean by nonviolence gets people labeled as advocating violence. This is a sure sign that the question is not operating in a real world way, but instead is operating ideologically, or politically. In the past, I've seen this kind of undefined nonviolence used by organizers over and over again to justify cooperating with the police to isolate and target radicals and dissidents. The irony, of course, is that the police are anything but nonviolent. I saw someone on some thread say that organizers were chatting with the local NYPD red squad. This should not be tolerated in general, but certainly not at a protest against state surveillance. If it's true, these people should be immediately removed from whatever positions of authority they have. However, you'll note that no one seems to propose that nonviolence in this case includes not cooperating with police. This kind of thing, for example, would certainly keep

many occupiers and anarchists away from this protest. Which is too bad, as I said, because both of those two groups have a great depth of experience, plus they have been targeted by the state, so they should be natural allies.
[]kreuzer007 2 points 16 hours ago (3|1)

This was really insightful, thanks!

[]PhxClassWarCouncil [+2] 4 points 16 hours ago (5|1)

Thanks for giving me a chance to rant. Cheers!

[]spacepandaz 3 points 11 hours ago (4|1)

I enjoyed your rant. Keep on ranting.

[]A_Giant_Space_Turtle [+2] 1 point 11 hours ago (3|2)

You literally deserve an award for this and I hope every single fucking member of restore the fourth reads this thread. Fucking nailed it. I mean, you covered background, history, the nuance of each interspersed element, everythingand summed it up perfectly.
[]ThrowawyProblems 2 points 42 minutes ago (2|0)

red squad The guy in the blueshirt with the red tie was the culprit . He goes by /u/NeutralityMentality , and every vibe I got off the guy was stereotypical white liberal making a protest as unfun as possible. He actually told us to stop dancing early on in the protest. I pretty much bailed halfway through when I saw this kid was going along with the role the police let him have.