Uprise, redux

This fabulous lady and friend from Positive Force is always seeing brilliant things and this week she says them brilliantly about the Occupy movement, among other things:

http://www.broadsnark.com/things-you-might-have-missed-75/

My two favorite articles she links to are this one, about non-violent tactics:

http://wagingnonviolence.org/2011/10/what-diversity-of-tactics-really-means-for-occupy-wall-street/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+WagingNonviolence+%28Waging+Nonviolence%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

And this one, about white liberals and the need to communicate with "the other 99%":

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/24-1

I went up to Boston for the weekend to visit friends and spent some time at their Occupy movement. It was much more engaging, colorful, and well organized than ours in DC seems to be, with all kinds of community services, like mini libraries and sign collections, speakers (Noam Chomsky!) and singers, and a general air of action. I won't enter in to the massive discussion and debate about these movements that others are expressing more eloquently (see above). I think on a base level all that matters is that the left is stirring, and it is stirring in line with the global movement for horizontal organizing which is badass (and also filled with its own issues, of course). The temptation to hope that it might achieve real change is almost terrifying. Don't want to have my hopes dashed, I suppose. And here in DC it's hard to participate and work a 9-5 job at the same time. I am trying this new idea out of seeing them as fun. Revolution should always be part celebration.

Onwards