Saturday, December 3, 2011

It's Time to Decamp

The physical encampments of the Occupy Movement are going away.  City by city, for various just and unjust reasons, encampments are being dismantled.  Occupy Boston seeks to delay its eviction by proactively seeking a court injunction, but this activity is just sucking energy from the community that could be spent accomplishing our long-range goals.  The authorities will win, and most encampments will not survive the winter.  We can fight this losing battle all the way down to the bottom, whining about our first amendment rights until nobody is listening to us anymore.

Alternatively, we can accept the inevitable, and transform the movement into something more effective.  It was never really about the occupations.  Occupation is a tactic, a means to an end.  It turned out to be effective beyond our wildest dreams, changing the national conversation in a matter of months.  Now that we have everyone's attention, is occupation still a useful tactic, or should we pivot to something else?  Obviously I think occupation has outlived its usefulness and has become a distraction and a burden to the movement.  Now is the time to turn the corner, and choose new tactics.  Let's not fade away, let's transform.

The mainstream media will lose interest soon if we don't give them something new.  Pulling a "mic check" on a public figure's speech is an example of a brilliant new tactic that relies not at all on having a 24/7 public encampment nearby.  However, simply reproducing successful mic checks ad nauseum will not win the war either.  I believe the spirit of "Occupy Everywhere" will be composed of dozens of new tactics of this type, and many more we can't imagine.  And if the Occupy Movement continues to evolve, it will confound our enemies, giving them nothing solid to strike at.

For these reasons, I think the long-range strategic thinkers in the movement must come out actively in favor of decamping, rather than letting things devolve.  Acting in concert to change our tactics would be a show of strength, while letting encampments be evicted one-by-one will be seized upon by our enemies as a sign of weakness and failure.  We are living in dangerous times, and our survival is not guaranteed.  To maximize our chances of survival, we should constantly re-evaluate our tactics and encourage the movement to follow those that are most effective.  If we survive, we will win. To survive, we must adapt.  They say humans are good at adapting.  Let's prove it.



No comments:

Post a Comment