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occupy california 
25 September 2009 at 1:38 am |
Big solidarity from your comrades in NYC!
Generalize the struggle! OCCUPY EVERYTHING!
26 September 2009 at 4:03 am |
Fuck yeah NYC! Awesome solidarity protest, really excited everyone here! Occupy New York! Occupy Everything!
25 September 2009 at 1:58 am |
What y’all are doing is amazing keep it up! I’d love to know how other students can support. I’m very active in Students for a Democratic Society and I’d love to find ways for our chapters to support your current action. you can e-mail me or find me on facebook(I’m one of like two Jasper Conner’s).
Solidarity from DC!
26 September 2009 at 4:02 am |
Got your email, Jasper, we’ll be in contact
25 September 2009 at 2:10 am |
Good job guys! As a former CSU student, I’m shocked at how the university systems in California have been completely betrayed by the state government. You show them!
26 September 2009 at 4:05 am |
Thanks, Julia. And its not just the university systems — the entire public sector is being robbed by our own elected representatives. Its up to you, too!
25 September 2009 at 3:14 am |
Solidarity from Toronto!
26 September 2009 at 4:02 am |
Thanks, Tyler! Solidarity with Toronto
25 September 2009 at 5:23 am |
Photos from today’s strike at UC Santa Cruz: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melissarachelblack/sets/72157622449721648/
25 September 2009 at 6:03 am |
Thanks, Melissa. If it’s all right we’ll give that its own post?
25 September 2009 at 6:58 am |
I just sent two emails directly to Steve of OCCUPY CALIFORNIA in an effort to join hands in solidarity… in a hands on way… since I’m a short distance from the campus. Beyond that though, I want everyone to know that before we heard about OCCUPY CALIFORNIA… we had a thing going called TOSCA (Taking Over the State of California). In short, we intend to put twelve unaffiliated, non-politician citizens into the Sacred Seat in Sacramento in 2010… legally and non-violently… as per http://oxtogrind.org/archive/364. Many high profile (worldwide) figures — such as Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti and Bill Blum — are on board with us with their imprimaturs; see http://oxtogrind.org/archive/336 for a short list. However, we want grassroots connections immediately… so that we can move expeditiously with our agenda… and help with the priorities embraced by OCCUPY CALIFORNIA. Contact 831-688-8038 in Aptos, California or TOSCA.2010[ATATATAT]YAHOO.com.
25 September 2009 at 7:24 am |
While I’m waiting for my previous comment to be approved for posting, I’m going to add some stuff from the top of my head… which is bursting with energy for OCCUPY CALIFORNIA. First of all, I want to underscore that we’re not into following any of the old paradigms for protest/change. If the TOSCA plan at http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/07/taking-over-post-arnold-california/ and http://oxtogrind.org/archive/364 seems like it’s doing that… then you’re not really getting what it’s about. No petitions. No more contacting disingenuous representatives. No more marching in circles. No more participation in the electoral arena along traditional lines. No more generic communications. No more getting your head bashed in. No more arrests. There’s plenty of $$ out there for one and all to have access to both affordable education AND decent health coverage. For EVERYONE. That’s part of what we’ll be addressing. BUT… one of the most important aspects of TOSCA is that we’re going to do what we’re doing on a ZERO BUDGET. We’re going to create a watershed in history without any fund raising. To make a very important point… which I don’t believe I have to spell out for you. We may fail. But, then, we’ll fail again. And, then, as Beckett says, fail again better. But… I don’t think we’re going to fail to secure that gubernatorial seat for our mutual purposes. And, as I pointed out to Steve of Occupy California tonight, the Guv has enormous influence on everything from The Regents of the UC System to… you’re not going to believe what the Guv can do UNILATERALLY in the state. Aside from the release of prisoners. Aside from placing a moratorium on the death penalty. There’s lots more that can be done without any negotiations with gangster politicians. Let’s have a rendezvous tomorrow, yes? Call 831-688-8038 or email tosca.2010[atatat]yahoo.com. Best, The Ox
25 September 2009 at 2:02 pm |
Hola all,
Let us know what help you might need.
Perhaps a Virtual Sit-In? We can help.
I would like to offer another one for us to consider as a
possibility – Electronic Civil Disobedience. Below you will find a section from
Mapping the Repertoire of Electronic Contention by Sasha Costanza-Chock
(Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania).
Download the entire text here:
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/MappingECD2001.doc
III. Electronic Civil Disobedience
ECD can be located on the matrix above as a set of disruptive electronic
tactics that are effective primarily at achieving mobilization and
cultural outcomes. While several other forms of contentious electronic
action also involve mass participation, such as online petitions or email
campaigns, these are not based on simultaneous or synchronous
participation. In addition, these types of collective electronic action
would be classified as conventional rather than disruptive. Other
electronic tactics that are classified as disruptive do not require mass
collective action, but typically can be implemented by an individual or a
very small group.
(Here is a little Mexican Sci-Fi musical dance number for you to enjoy while you read:
Que Viva Mexico!)
However, ECD lies in a strange zone both conceptually and legally. At the
moment, there is a kind of framing battle taking place around this
tactic, with corporate and government actors pressing to cast ECD as a
form of ‘cyberterrorism’ (see Denning 2001; NIPC 2001; Paul 2001) and
with some SMOs, activists, intellectuals, and free speech advocates
trying to locate ECD as a new form of legitimate protest activity (see
Critical Art Ensemble 1994, 1996; Electronic Frontier Foundation 2001;
Dominguez 2001). It is an interesting moment to examine the ways in which
activists who are developing and using these techniques are linking or
not linking with SMOs, and to look at how various kinds of SMOs perceive
ECD and choose whether or not to use it. To paint a more detailed picture
of these processes, I will now focus in on two instances of ECD. I chose
the first example, the Virtual Sit-In for a Living Wage @ Harvard
University, in order to highlight the ways in which ECD can be linked to
actions in the ‘real world’ and to point out the internal debate around
tactics that often takes place within and between social movement actors.
I include the Netstrike for Vieques to illustrate the dynamics of
cross-movement diffusion of the electronic repertoire.
Virtual Sit In for a Living Wage @ Harvard University
Background
In the spring of 2001, approximately 30 students from the Harvard
University Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) occupied University
administrative offices in an attempt to force the University to comply
with a City of Cambridge living wage ordinance that tied minimum salaries
to a cost of living formula. Several hundred employees on Harvard’s
janitorial staff were receiving below the living wage, and the
administration was increasingly employing temp workers who not only
received below living wage but also received no benefits. To top it all
off, Harvard announced that it had just reached an unprecedented 18
billion dollar endowment. PSLM members who were not inside the occupied
offices, together with other supportive students, built a tent city
outside the occupied building that served as a home base from which
rallies, music events, film screenings, and media visits were managed. In
the third week of the action, as media attention seemed to reach a plateau
and administration officials continued to refuse to negotiate with
activists, a group called the Electronic Disturbance Theater offered to
help the PSLM escalate their tactics by adding a ‘Virtual Sit-In’ to the
building occupation.
Actors
The major groups involved were the PSLM, the Harvard administration, the
Harvard student and professor supporters, student groups such as Students
Against Sweatshops, various local and national media, various local and
national unions including Communication Workers of America, nonprofits
including Justice for Janitors, and the Electronic Disturbance Theater.
Actors did include direct beneficiaries of the proposed policy changes
(Harvard employees), but a majority were what McCarthy and Zald have
termed conscience constituents (McCarthy and Zald 1977).
Action
After two meetings during which the Electronic Disturbance Theater
explained and demonstrated the ECD technique to PSLM, both groups came to
a consensus decision to use the tactic. Initially, opinions within the
PSLM were mixed, with some students immediately excited about using the
virtual sit-in as an escalation tool but others voicing either skepticism
about the usefulness of such an action or fear about the possible
repercussions. Concern was articulated both in terms of whether there
might be adverse affects on student and faculty computer systems that
would alienate potential supporters of the Living Wage campaign, and in
terms of a fear that the media might frame the electronic action in terms
of ‘hacking’ or ‘cyberterrorism,’ undercutting the legitimacy of the PSLM.
In response to these concerns, it was decided that the action should not
be targeted at Harvard University servers directly, since that might
interrupt student access and decrease support for the campaign. In
addition, it was determined that the action would be announced as an
Electronic Disturbance Theater operation in support of the Living Wage
campaign, not as a PSLM action per se. Electronic Disturbance Theater
agreed with this logic and built a virtual sit-in targeting the websites
of 8 major corporations with board members who were also on the Harvard
Board of Trustees, the body ultimately responsible for financial
decisionmaking at the University. The virtual sit-in tool automatically
sent repeated requests for nonexistent pages called
‘living_wage@Harvard.now’ to the targeted corporate servers for as long as
participants kept their browsers open. The theory was that large numbers
of participants would flood corporate target servers with requests,
slowing access to their sites and filling server logs with
‘living_wage@Harvard.now not found’ messages. A press release about the
action went out to local and national media on the day of the Virtual
Sit-In.
Outcomes
The immediately observable outcome was in terms of mobilization. The
Virtual Sit In for a Living Wage attracted around 600 participants during
the course of the 12 hour action. At around 5pm Communication Workers of
America (CWA) national office in Washington DC called the Electronic
Disturbance Theater to say that they had received an email about the
action and had decided to participate. In terms of political outcomes, it
is impossible to quantify the degree to which the action contributed to
the Harvard administration’s partial capitulation to the Progressive
Student Labor Movement (PSLM), which took place one week later with the
decision to create a review committee that would include administrators,
professors, students, and employees. The Virtual Sit-In was not mentioned
by any administration officials in any public communications, although it
was clear that they were aware the action took place. A story about the
action did go out on the AP wire, but there can be no doubt that any
direct policy impact the Virtual Sit In had was dwarfed by the physical
sit in, which received sustained national press attention and had a
long-term physical presence in the center of the campus. In addition, from
the point of view of the PSLM it could be argued that the Virtual Sit In
had the negative effect of causing some degree of internal disagreement
and apprehension, at least initially. This would align with a criticism of
ECD as a distraction from ‘real’ action.
Consistent with my proposed tactic-outcomes matrix, the most effective
outcome here was not in terms of policy but rather mobilization,
especially the participation by Communications Workers of America. This
also led to cultural outcomes: for example, a positive report on the
virtual action was sent out the next day by the CWA national office to
750,000 telecom workers. This in turn increased the already massive flood
of emails and phone calls expressing solidarity from around the country,
helping to strengthen the resolve of students inside and to build ‘moral
pressure’ on the Harvard administration. In addition, CWA became
interested in the possibility of incorporating virtual sit-in tactics into
their own action repertoire. This was another kind of cultural outcome:
diffusion of tactics. To illustrate this last point, I will provide a very
brief description of a second ECD action, the Netstrike for Vieques.
Netstrike for Vieques
About three months after the Virtual Sit-In for a Living Wage, in May
2001, CWA collaborated with Electronic Disturbance Theater and the
Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (Comite Pro Rescate y
Desarollo de Vieques, or CPRDV) to help launch a ‘netstrike’ in support of
civil disobedients who were attempting to force a halt to US Navy military
exercises on Puerto Rico’s ‘baby sister’ island. While about 30 activists
broke onto the Navy’s target range and forced delays in scheduled bombing
practice, over 1,300 participants from around the world used a web-based
tool developed by the Electronic Disturbance Theater to flood http://www.navy.com
with protest messages. The Netstrike for Vieques used the Navy’s own
online enlistment form, filling required ‘name,’ ‘address,’ and other
fields with requests that the Navy cease bombing and honor demands by
Viequenses and many other prominent Puertoricans (including the Mayor of
Vieques, the Mayor of San Juan, and the Governor of Puerto Rico) for a
public referendum to decide the fate of the US military presence. Several
hours into the action, at around 4pm, CWA sent out a call to action to its
750,000 members. Nearly a thousand people joined the action during the
next hour. At 5pm, Electronic Disturbance Theater received a phone call
from the administrator of http://www.navy.com, who demanded that the action be
brought to a halt. According to the administrator, the Netstrike had
“completely flooded our enlistment database with thousands of messages,
and now our site is starting to crash (Dominguez 2001).” The administrator
warned EDT that unless the action ended, participants would risk federal
prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, potentially facing
large fines and up to 5 years imprisonment. After consulting with CWA and
CPRDV, Electronic Disturbance Theater called an end to the action and
declared it a victory. An article about the action went out on the AP
wire. Electronic Disturbance Theater culled organization names from
hundreds of emails sent by supporters in over 20 countries and created a
list of participants that was published on the Netstrike site and
forwarded to the listservs of both CWA and CPRDV. It is worth noting here
that several days later, the Navy announced plans to begin phasing out its
operations in Vieques over a 3 year period.
How do these two ECD actions compare in terms of outcomes? The Netstrike
for Vieques had greater effects in the category of mobilization than the
Virtual Sit-In for a Living Wage, with more than twice as many people
participating in the action. In addition, the actual disruptive effects of
the Netstrike were confirmed by Navy web administrators, while the actual
disruptive effects of the Living Wage action on the 8 targeted corporate
servers were negligible. In terms of cultural outcomes, the Living Wage
action resulted in some degree of press coverage (AP wire) and
distribution of an action report by CWA, and also served to pique CWA
interest in adopting the tactic for its own campaigns. The Netstrike for
Vieques resulted in a greater amount of coverage, with an AP article, two
radio interviews, postings to a dozen indymedia.org sites in both Spanish
and English, postings to other alternative web news sites, an article in
the indymedia weekly broadsheet that went out to over a hundred
alternative print publications around the world, and several email reports
that went out to CWA’s 750,000 members and to CPRDV’s listserv (Dominguez
2001). Direct policy outcomes could not be claimed by either action,
although it could be argued that each added some small degree of pressure
on the target to respond to policy demands made by activists. In both
cases, it is interesting that the targets did in fact yield policy
concessions within days of the action, although no one would claim that
these electronic disturbances played more than a very small peripheral
role in much larger ongoing campaigns.
Another interesting difference was the degree to which internal debates
took place about whether to use the tactic, with some PSLM members raising
serious doubts but with CPRDV embracing the action more enthusiastically.
Although it is difficult to disentangle the various factors that might
influence the diffusion of ECD, or of the repertoire of electronic
contention more generally, it might be useful to turn here to a discussion
of political opportunity structures.
25 September 2009 at 2:33 pm |
It’s great that Dominguez has jumped in here with his electronic stuff, but WHY hasn’t anyone contacted me regarding http://oxtogrind.org/archive/364 TOSCA joining hands in solidarity? I trust all is well on the other end. Best, The Ox at tosca.2010[atatatatatat]yahoo.com.
27 September 2009 at 2:16 pm |
I’m a student at Cañada College in Redwood City. Anyone else in community college want to organize and show solidarity? Please contact me:
rose.katy5@gmail.com
30 January 2010 at 2:55 am |
Pretty excellent posts. I just came across your site and wished to say i have really took pleasure reading through your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again shortly.