St. Paul Principles and Occupy Denver

Respect for a Diversity of Tactics

While I don't believe in non-violence as an absolute moral principle, I still have a tremendous admiration for the work of Ghandhi, Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez, and Marshall Rosenberg, and I share the belief of many Occupy Denver members about the need to promote non-violent resistance within our particular movement. And it's because I share the values of non-violence that I think it's absolutely essential that we commit to the St. Paul Principles, which, in my interpretation, not only aren't in contradiction to non-violent strategies but offer the only means of sincerely putting those strategies into action. The St. Paul Principles, as I interpret them, do not say that everyone has to agree with the actions of other people in the group; they don't say that you have to approve of actions you might define as violent. They merely state that “our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups”, which is to say that you have every right to disagree with and even resist other people's actions as long as you don't do it through the use of force. You can gently try to discourage someone within our group to not use violence but you can't use violence or the threat of violence to ensure compliance. If someone throws a water bottle at police, you might, in the name of non-violence, respectfully express your disagreement with the person's actions or even stand in front of the police and take the hit yourself. The St Paul Principles say that you can do that. But you can't forcibly try to take the water bottle away, you can't wrestle the culprit to the ground and remove him or her from the situation, you can't verbally threaten the person with violent retaliatory action, and you can't turn him or her over to the police so that they can administer the violence you sought to avoid. The St. Paul Principles, in other words, allow people with different ideologies to remain in disagreement while simultaneously remaining in solidarity against corporate exploitation. Put another way, the St. Paul Principles allow us to use the same non-violent strategies within our group that non-violent advocates would like us to use in response to the forces of the corporate state. If we can ask that our members respond to the violence of the police with acts of non-violent resistance—that we respond respectfully to their disrespect—then we ought to insist that we treat acts of violence by our own comrades the same way. If we're asking our members to not dehumanize the police (the only group we can unanimously agree has acted violently), to not, as recommended by the Eight Rules of Non-Violence, see them as enemies but as potential recruits, and to not respond to their violence with violence of our own, then we ought to be able to respond to our own comrades, even when they disagree with us, with the same measure of respect and decency.

Not only that, but repealing the St. Paul Principles without a plan for enforcement won't actually accomplish anything besides a further division within our movement. Even if we repeal the St. Paul Principles, people are still going to act in ways that some people define as violent. People will show up on Saturdays who have never been to a General Assembly and who know nothing about its decisions, or who have been to GA but don't care about its decisions, or who have been to GA and care about abiding by its decisions but, in the heat of the moment, out of fear or anger, do something in violation of GA policy—people within the movement will still act in contradiction to GA decisions whether you endorse the St. Paul Principles or not. On the other hand, if we're serious about enforcing non-violence—if we're serious about policing ourselves in respect to the principles of non-violence, then, one, we have to be a much more organized and more hierarchical and more centralized entity than we currently are, and, two, we'll have to use force, violence and/or the threat of violence, to guarantee that everyone acts in accordance with our principles. And we'll then no longer be a non-violent movement. If you mean to take Ghandi's and MLK's ideas seriously and literally, and if you mean to model a real democratic community and process, then you can't use violence in the name of non-violence and you can't advocate top-down enforcement of General Assembly decisions. The danger here is in re-shaping the concepts of non-violence and democracy into commodity fetishes that are completely void of significant moral and practical meaning.

In my view, the St. Paul Principles offer a way out of the ethical conundrum. The issue of enforcement doesn't have to be altogether avoided, because a top-down, coercive, and centralized program of enforcement isn't the only option. We can enforce the majority of our primary values democratically, through social interaction, which is mainly what we've been doing and precisely what the St. Paul Principles encourage, but no set of principles, be they democratic or non-violent, can be expected to account for every situation we might encounter and to rule over our every behavior. Neither the St. Paul Principles or the principles of non-violence or democracy should be looked upon as absolute and infallible moral commands. Obviously, if a fellow protestor attempts to rape or murder another fellow protestor, then the St. Paul Principles as well as the principles of non-violence and democracy need to be overlooked in order to end the abuse as abruptly and efficiently as possible. The St. Paul Principles, or any principles, shouldn't be seen as mandates for behavior, nor were they intended as such. The St. Paul Principles specifically mean to challenge top-down decision-making and organizing and to empower everyone involved to take direct action in the world around them. They DO NOT advocate violence. True, they allow affinity groups to choose their own courses of action, but not without some form of consensus or direct democracy to decide on goals and tactics. The St. Paul Principles aren't dictates; they are guidelines, however, for continuing the discussion, for existing in unity and camaraderie with each other in spite of our ideological differences, and for allowing those of us who prize non-violence to continue to practice and promote our values without moral contradiction and without demonizing comrades who think and act differently, which isn't just a more honest and committed non-violent practice but also a much more effective strategy for convincing others to share our values. We need the St. Paul Principles, that is, to prevent the precise kinds of divisions we've seen from recent efforts to have the principles repealed.


St Paul Principles

1. our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.
2. the actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
3. any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
4. we oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. we agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.

8 Rules of Non-Violence

1) Nonviolent action AND speech, no matter what. Zero tolerance for violence.

2) Unity of message across orgs & people. Consistent demands, all should know them.

3) There must be a long-term and coherent strategy, not just tactics & actions.

4) Police should be seen as potential recruits to movement, not enemy.

5) Keep national/international audience in mind when framing. Goal is win ppl over.

6) Defensive strategies never win. Don't respond to attacks using their language.

7) Claim victory whenever possible. Important for morale.

8) Keep anger in check /w solidarity actions & humor."

....

The revolution is at hand. Though naked, I will blend with the darkness. You will not see or hear me enter. I will cross over your well-trimmed lawn and slide quietly through a crevice, creeping into your privacy. My bare feet will not make a sound as I step across the kitchen tiles and the wooden floors in the hallway and passed the kids' rooms until I reach and open your door. I will stand over your sleeping body with my hand held out to lead you further into your nightmare.

Message to Occupy Denver/Wall Street

On The Need for International Solidarity and Civil Disobedience

Today's economic problems weren't created by a few bad policy decisions. They weren't created by the repeal of the Glass-Seagal act or the Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling or the Bush tax cuts for the rich. And changing policy, while it might temporarily alleviate the suffering of a few, won't solve our problems. If we really intend to take our country back from the ruling class, we have to fundamentally alter the hit-and-run economy the ruling class has constructed to keep us down; we have to overthrow Capitalism and create a sincere Democracy in its stead.

Let's not forget that the affluence experienced by the middle classes of the 50s and 60s came at the expense of the working and peasant classes in other parts of the world. Capitalism can't function without exploitation, most especially the exploitation of labor. The economic problems we are experiencing today are a direct result of internal conflicts within the Capitalist system itself, specifically the crisis of over accumulation as income is consistently shifted from labor to capital. The problem isn't new, either. It's only new to a portion of the working classes of the First World who up to now have been benefiting from the monopoly control of corporations that reside in post-industrialized nations. The crisis of over-accumulation, however, is too severe at this point for the ruling class to allow First World workers to continue to share in the bounty. If the working classes of the First World want to get back their rights as human beings, not be forced to sell their labor at an ever decreasing price, they have to seek solidarity with the exploited of the Third World. What I mean to say is that the ninety nine percent has to include the non-ruling class members outside of the United States, and outside of Europe and Japan, as well. This has to be a world-wide movement or it's nothing.

That said, the movement also has to be more than a fashion statement, which is to say that it has to take seriously the idea that it might be effective and, as a result, draw down the wrath, disdain, and violence of the ruling class. It has to be prepared to do more than just chant slogans and sign petitions. It has to be ready to succeed, to become historically significant, which means it has to be prepared to break the rules of the system that created the problem and to effectively defend itself against the destructive powers that will inevitably coalesce once the movement becomes cohesive and proficient enough to be perceived as a genuine threat.

Limiting ourselves to legal strategies wont get us anywhere, nor will efforts to achieve solidarity with the police or military forces whose job it is to protect the ruling class from the people. Plenty of the men who donned SS uniforms may have been great fathers, husbands, sons, and friends. But they were still SS men. Their job was to serve and protect the Nazi system. Make no mistake, police officers are the enemy. They do not represent the ninety nine percent. They are not on our side simply by dint of being workers. It is their job to resist us, to protect them from us. And failure to see them as antagonistic is to side with the elites against the people, to side with apathy and against action and creativity. For any movement to make a difference it has to take risks, and that means standing up to the violence of the dominant power structure; that means defying not navigating power's commands. If you are not yet prepared to take real risks, if you are not yet ready to insist on your rights as a complete human being, if you are not quite ready to honestly assert yourself-—then you are not yet ready to occupy anything other than your couches and patio furniture.

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

I saw Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams the other night. I'm not a big fan of Herzog, and he does some of the same things in this film that made me dislike him (pseudo philosophizing, confusing tangents, etc.), but, when all is said and done, this is a film definitely worth seeing, if only for the opportunity to see the ancient cave drawings in 3D.

The first thing that strikes you is how well the drawings have been preserved. They don't look like they were made as much as 35,000 years ago. Some look as if they could have been drawn last week. Suddenly, 35,000 years ago doesn't seem that distant.

The next thing you notice is the quality of the drawings. They don't look like “primitive” drawings at all, not in the sense of being childish or simple, the way we too often stereotype anything primitive. One is drawn with eight legs, each set gradually fading, as if to suggest motion, creating a kind of proto-cinematic effect. Another, of a buffalo, depicts the head of the animal looking directly at the viewer, not to the side, demonstrating a knowledge of perspective tens of thousands of years before the Renaissance. The detail and firm elegant lines of a series of horses suggest a mastered and studied technique forged over several years in a rigorous art school. Two rhinos are clashing in combat, their bodies in full motion, perfectly proportioned in spite of the curved contours of the cave walls used as canvas. Even some of the less well drawn figures show evidence of sophistication and creativity. A series of lions are drawn in profile but with two Picassoesque eyes. A misshaped rhino propels its tongue out like a monster from a child's nightmare, creating an almost surreal effect.

The worst executed drawings are side by side with the best, the simplest with the most sophisticated. You feel, as a viewer, neither awed or repulsed, alienated neither by a specialized perfection or an amateur crudity. Instead, you feel a camaraderie with the artists, a sense of kinship for ancestors of a forgotten past. And once again 35,000 years doesn't seem that long ago.

But the sense of connection one feels doesn't come at the expense of wonder. To the contrary, the mystery only thickens as you ponder the drawings' purpose and meaning. The only human depictions are hands, mostly made by the same person, and, depending on your interpretation, a nude overweight female figure embraced by a buffalo. Everything else depicts a non-human animal, mostly horses, rhinos, lions, and buffalo. I saw one bear, but why only one? The cave floor is littered with bear skulls. One of them seems to be placed as if on a pedestal, ashes found below, suggesting a kind of worship. It's unlikely that humans ever lived in the cave (no human bones have been found). It was used only for art and maybe for worship. The cave was home only to other animals, primarily the bear, which, one would think, would weigh heavily on the artists' minds as they created. Yet only one bear is depicted. And if not bear, why not humans? Why only human hand prints? Why is there no history of a tribe drawn out such as you see in some of the ancient drawings from the Americas? Does the lack of the human form show a blissful lack of self-consciousness, an obedience to a lost tradition, symbols for a totemic ritual, or just a literal embodiment of the artists´ needs and desires or interests? We don't know. In the nearby cave at Lacroix, which is now closed, I have read that the original artists would have needed to crawl on their elbows and stomachs for over a hundred yards to reach the chamber of drawings. While easier to get to, the drawings at Chauvet are placed in a similarly peculiar location. Nothing is drawn at the mouth of the cave, the seemingly obvious and most convenient choice. Instead, the artists chose to draw further in, mostly at the very back, hidden in the depths. In other words, they would have needed to enter the potential home of a bear or lion and follow it to the very end, putting their lives unnecessarily at risk, just to draw or admire a few pictures. Why? If you require a logical explanation, you're unlikely to find one, since there isn't any logical reason to create the drawings in the first place. But even in that, in the unresolvable riddle of the drawings' existence, one feels a certain solidarity with the creators. The sense of mystery, the awe that comes over us as we look at their creations, is also their awe, their wonder, appreciation, and fear in the face of the non-human world. And just as they might not always have viewed themselves as part of that other world or, rather, feared their small place in it, their insignificance, so we too are fearful of our connection or lack of connection to them, to the primitive, to a people who lived alongside cave lions and wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers and wolves double the size of what we know today, who may have worshiped bear, who hunted their own food and on a daily basis had cause to reflect upon their relationship to the non human world around them, a world much greater than themselves and beyond comprehension. Perhaps to mitigate the distance between themselves and their environment, to feel less small in their surroundings, they took to depicting some of the outer forces on cave walls, trying maybe to align themselves with those forces if not to control them, bringing cracks of light into the cave's overwhelming figurative and literal darkness. In such an act, we can better imagine ourselves reflected in the drawings, as we too try to come to terms with forces beyond our control and beyond our comprehension, with a past we have lost connection with. The drawings render us fatuous, and, drawn in by their mystery, we rediscover the same kinship with the artists that the artists may have sought with the objects of their drawings. As understanding fails, communion deepens.

The Wise Father and the Liberal Daughter

Below is something that's been circulating on Facebook recently. And my response to it.

Father & Daughter Talk

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be very liberal, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth.
She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch conservative, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.
One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He respond-
ed by asking how she was doing in school.
Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying. Her father listened and then asked, How is your friend Audrey doing?
She replied, Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.
Her wise father asked his daughter, Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.
The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!
The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, Welcome to the conservative side of the fence.?
If you ever wondered what side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!


I guess if you're an active Fox News viewer, you might find that anecdote convincing. But to any sane person it's an obvious false analogy that bypasses the much more difficult task of providing an accurate critical analysis of class and political reality. Let's see, if I agree that the winning basketball team shouldn't have to give up some of its points to the loser, then that must mean that competition should serve as my model for every human and non-human interaction I ever experience. God, why have I been so stupid not to see that? It's so simple!

Let me give you a slightly more accurate analogy:

Let's say that you go on a tourist safari in Africa with nine other people and you get lost in the jungle. The group soon runs out of supplies and is forced to hunt and scavenge for its survival. After two days, no one has had any luck and everyone is getting weaker and weaker from lack of food and water. Then Mr. Mumabi, the only local in the group, the one who best knows the terrain and how to survive there, makes a kill. He eats the dead animal in front of the entire group and refuses to share. “I earned this meat,” he says. “I worked really hard to shoot and skin that animal.” He contentedly finishes his hearty supper and fades into a peaceful sleep as the other nine people share a handful of berries and move closer and closer to starvation.

That seems pretty bad, but if I want to accurately analogize the current corporate monopoly capitalist system, I need to add a few more sadistic details. What I failed to mention is that in addition to being the only local and therefore understanding the terrain better than anyone else, Mr. Mumabi is also the only experienced hunter and the only person with a knowledge of what berries and plants are edible and what ones are poisonous, knowledge he refuses to share with his “competitors”. I also forgot to mention that the animal he killed was an adult wildabeast, and, since the group doesn't have a freezer to preserve the meat, about ninety percent of it will go to waste. But Mr. Mumabi still refuses to share because he earned that meat and made the kill on his own with nobody's help. He worked hard, after all.

But even with those details, I'm still not accurately representing the political realities of modern day capitalism. I also forgot to mention that Mr. Mumabi owns three fourths of the land the group is traveling on and refuses to let anyone else hunt on his property. The rest of the group then has to share the remaining twenty five percent of the terrain, which, unfortunately, isn't an area known for attracting game animals and has very few water sources. Not only that but Mr. Mumabi is the only person in the group with a gun, and he refuses to let anyone else use it. He worked hard for the money to buy that gun, you know.

By now you should be getting an idea of just how absurdly cruel our economic and political system is, but I'm not through. It gets worse. It isn't enough that Mr. Mumabi owns most all of the land and all of the means of production for securing one's survival and refuses to share any of it with the others, but the rest of the group, if they do, with their limited resources and knowledge, manage to find any food on their small portion of land, will have to give some of it away as a government tax. Mr. Mumabi, however, because he represents a corporation (or we could just say that he is a corporation, because, according to the Supreme Court, the terms 'human being' and 'corporation' mean the same thing), doesn't have to pay anything at all, not even a property tax. Not only does he not have to give up any of his disproportionate share of the pie, the government will actually give him a larger share. They provide incentives and subsidies to make his land yield yet more food and more wealth. And if it doesn't yield any wealth, worse yet if it costs more than it yields, the government will probably bail Mr. Mumabi out because he's simply too big to fail.

If you're a conservative Fox viewer, you might be saying to yourself that my analogy is misleading. You might say that Mr. Mumabi, in the real world, would not let the food he earned go to rot because that doesn't make any sense, even for a selfish capitalist. And you're partially right, in the real world when someone earns more wealth than he can possibly ever use in his lifetime, he doesn't let it rot, he sells his surplus so that he can make yet more money and more surplus. You might also, if you've been getting your information from Fox News, say that in the real world the richest ten percent don't own seventy five percent of the world's resources. And, again, you're partially right. In America, the richest ten percent own more than eighty percent of the wealth, and the bottom eighty percent own a paltry fourteen percent (and those are 2007 numbers; the problem is much worse today), but worldwide the gap is much, much bigger. (And, if I really wanted to be accurate, I would have to add that the little wealth available from the small portion of land allotted to the poorest among us is leased to multinational corporations who use it to make yet more wealth and then give only a small, very small, percentage of the original borrowed wealth back to the original owners, thereby increasing poverty). You might also contend that the richest corporations do pay taxes, and, again, you're right to an extent: A few of them do pay “some” taxes, but not very much. Almost all of the financial institutions that tanked our economy last year, for example, paid nothing for that year's taxes—not a single cent, and they also received a trillion dollar bonus for the trouble they caused us. But, if you're a conservative viewer of Fox news, you probably still don't believe my analogy represents a fair criticism of the status quo. You might say that Mr. Mumabi deserves his exceptionally large share of the pie. Maybe he doesn't necessarily work harder than the others, but, by dint of being raised in the jungle by a family of experienced hunters, he was essentially destined to have more than the rest. That's the way God, or Darwin, planned it. And maybe you're right. But if that's the case, you'll have to calmly accept that it is also Destiny's hand when the other nine members of the group chop Mr. Mumabi's head off and eat the rest of his wildabeast and take his supplies. After all, in the real world, that's what would likely happen. But there's one more detail I left out: Mr. Mumabi also owns a military complex that protects his interests, and, even more importantly, a conglomerate of media institutions, including Fox News, that convinces the other nine people that they're being treated fairly and that what's really happening is that Mr. Mumabi is getting deservedly better grades and shouldn't be asked to share his GPA with the others—that it's really Mr. Mumabi who's being picked on.