Tuesday, November 01, 2011

General Strike in Oakland



Tomorrow, 2 November 2011, in Oakland there will be a General Strike. The stated purpose is to shut down the usual flow of goods and money that signify a system dominated by capital in its most oppressive forms. This is in direct response to the attempted dispersal of the Oscar Grant Plaza occupation. Among other things the police brutality on this occasion resulted in critical injuries to a an American veteran of Iraq. I will not attempt here to justify or document any of these activities, since the Occupy movement is far too complicated and diffuse to be summarised simply.

Here is an article with many graphic pictures that documents the incident in which police fired a gas canister into a crowd, resulting in the aforementioned injury.

Here is the website for Occupy Oakland.

When I look at the news that doesn't make the news, I feel like I am living in some kind of a science-fiction novel. It's scripted by P.K. Dick. I trust it will have a happy ending.

I will have more to say about this movement at another time. I have serious critiques of the philosophy behind the movement. But really, that doesn't matter. Solidarity matters. I am in complete support of the Occupy Oakland movement. This is based in my past activities in "mainstream" politics, my work as a member of various cooperatives and social groups, my continuing development as a practising anarchist artist, and so on.

Every day we need to live our lives as a General Strike against economic and political oppression, by which I simply mean over-concentrations of power in the hands of a few who have no mandate to speak for the majority. My hat is off to those people putting their ass on the line.

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