Comments on: Hoodies and Hijabs

By: Zig Zag

Zig Zag — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:07:37 +0000

Don’t forget that many supporters of national socialism in 1930s Germany were small shop keepers and other middle class elements. Business improvement associations are comprised of small business owners who push for gentrification, more police and security, anti-panhandling and anti-graffiti measures, etc. Still, they are not the primary target of militant attacks so we shouldn’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.

By: On Boots and the Black Bloc « Queering the Singularity

On Boots and the Black Bloc « Queering the Singularity — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:51:16 +0000

[...] here and here for [...]

By: Summerspeaker

Summerspeaker — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:36:01 +0000

Plenty of small businesses – including, sadly, co-ops – treat their employees as miserably as corporations. The fetishization of small business serves capitalism.

By: Summerspeaker

Summerspeaker — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:33:03 +0000

The idea that we can win if we’re just more diligent and disciplined strikes me as implausible. Respectable and restrained organizing has as bad as record as insurrection. So far, both have failed. Capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and hierarchy of all sorts continue to reign. Text about building better alternatives and creating a mass movement is just that: text. I don’t know exactly why all our various efforts flounder, but I recommend that we blame the system rather each other. Infighting is easier, because we’re much weaker than the state and capital, but does little to advance the overall struggle.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:19:52 +0000

Shopkeepers are not capitalists, they are shopkeepers.

By: bigshit

bigshit — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:13:57 +0000

rudy’s gives every oakland pig a free meal. fuck the trough.

By: herzfeld

herzfeld — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:44:24 +0000

Your logic is the same as those who say “workers are just failed capitalists”.
You couch your analysis in moralizing ethics rather than real structural analysis and strategy. A small family-owned business whose profits go into meeting their material needs is different from a bank run for the sake of investors (profits go to enriching shareholders and abstract reinvestment of capital). A employee owned co-op is structurally different from both of these, but is usually still a “small business”. It isn’t a question of ethics, it’s a question of class relations.

By: herzfeld

herzfeld — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:37:23 +0000

“why your pancakes take precedent over the lives of people who are being ethnically cleansed.” Hah, this is so much newly-politicized, unsophisticated, lashing-out flatulence. Equating a trendy but affordable diner with ethnic cleansing is just a rationalization to
A.) Confuse effect with cause
B.) feel self-righteous as somehow “outside of capitalism” and “ahead of the movement, the public understanding” — IOW elitism
C.) act out incoherent rage mindlessly, using an ad hoc personal code of signs. You can break property (physical capital) — but if you leave social relations (property rights, class structure, etc) unscathed and capitalism intact, you’ve accomplished *nothing*.

Merely curbing gentrification (e.g. by creating a sense of instability) does nothing to overturn the capitalism that *drives* gentrification. You also don’t serve the communities of Oakland by merely chasing $ away. There are plenty of areas in Oakland where no gentrification is taking place. Many are resource- and service-starved. Your actions don’t demonstrate your capability for taking the place of whatever paltry services the state does provide, by building a better alternative.

As long as you let capitalism reign, there will be poverty and deprivation — degentrifying one area will just move investment elsewhere. You can’t interrupt that system with sloppy insurrectionary tactics that alienate more working people than they attract and encourage to join the struggle. You’re not qualified to fight for the larger community, but what you can do is work to organize them to act on their own behalf. It isn’t a question of defending pancakes (a red herring) — it’s having a larger vision of where the problem is rooted and a long-range strategy of how to uproot it.

By: herzfeld

herzfeld — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:10:34 +0000

MG, that’s just a transparent rationalization. You’re basically making an argument similar to “well just because some bankers got greedy doesn’t mean the whole system of financial capital is corrupt” or “just because some officers are over-zealous in their application of force doesn’t mean the police are simply there for the violent enforcement of the policies of the ruling capitalist class”. Part of building a movement or any action is accountability to yourselves, and the community you claim to work on behalf of, for what its participants do. And to work strategically — with tactics that are consistent with principles and advance a strategy.

Your argument won’t be heard by people beyond discussions like these; it won’t reach other members of the community who just see the actions. The actions have to speak clearly and righteously. If what’s being said in word and deed is incoherent, sloppy, and follows no particular principle and strategic logic — you’ve got no support, no movement, no traction, no change to the structure of oppression.

By: um

um — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 08:08:05 +0000

oh god^