Between the Leninists and the Clowns: Avoiding recklessness and professionalism in revolutionary struggle
This piece reflects on the current strengths and weaknesses of the revolutionary networks that have emerged out of the Decolonize/ Occupy movement in Seattle. In particular, I critique some of the problems that arise because of lack of organization, and suggest ways we can address these without falling into top-down, authoritarian models of organization building. I want to acknowledge that several friends in the movement here have raised some of these points over the past nine months, and in some cases their interventions were dismissed.
Between the Leninists and the Clowns: Avoiding recklessness and professionalism in revolutionary struggle
Black Orchid Collective
This piece reflects on the current strengths and weaknesses of the revolutionary networks that have emerged out of the Decolonize/ Occupy movement in Seattle. In particular, I critique some of the problems that arise because of lack of organization, and suggest ways we can address these without falling into top-down, authoritarian models of organization building. I want to acknowledge that several friends in the movement here have raised some of these points over the past nine months, and in some cases their interventions were dismissed. I am writing this to back up their arguments, and to share my own. I hope this piece can spark the kind of comradely, transparent, public debate that I call for in it – I welcome criticisms and responses.
I. Decolonize / Occupy Seattle today
Decolonize/ Occupy Seattle might be dead. But if so, it has simply resurrected and transformed into something else: vibrant networks of people who are engaging in a variety of attractive struggles and projects that don’t seem to be losing any energy.
Weekly free barbecues in the Central District; a summer-long campaign against Prop.1, (the county’s attempt to fund a new juvenile detention center); labor solidarity with port truckers and striking Davis Wire and Waste Management workers; study groups and discussions at the Free University and the Wildcat social space; a new current of revolutionary queer organizing around the Grand Legion of Incindiary and Tenacious Unicorn Revolutionaries; solidarity with the rebellion in Anaheim; struggles against police violence, raids, grand juries, and state repression here in the Northwest; guerilla gardening; weekly marches against student debt; the workers’ caucus’ organizing with precarious workers. This is just a partial list of activities that gives a sense of the furious pace of political development going on here.
