So their ground breaking discovery for outsmarting the police is to ... leave and then come back. And maybe play some music. The Art of War style write up is humorously grandiose for something so silly. These people take themselves entirely too seriously.
On another note, pay attention to whats happening over on Reddit and their attempt to unseat Paul Ryan in protest of SOPA/PIPA. They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something that might actually have an effect. Ultimately, the 72 hours or so that Reddit has taken up this initiative is already appearing more effective than months of misguided OWS noise.
Going back even further, look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. Get out of the streets already and go actually make a difference with some concentrated focus and brain power.
> These people take themselves entirely too seriously.
> ...
> look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA.
What exactly is your metric for success here? A sleazy company changed their stance on a bill that the public is completely unaware of and couldn't give two shits about?
I think "the internet" is taking itself too seriously.
Meanwhile a nation-wide protest movement has at the very least succeeded in planting the issue of systemic economic injustice into mainstream public discourse on a daily basis. History may show OWS to be the catalyst for the resurrection of a real progressive movement in America.
The occupy camps have been largely impotent. Whatever immeasurable metaphysical success they've found thus far is more than likely purely coincidental. The collective attitudes of all individuals tend to shift in similar directions when shit gets bad enough. If the building is on fire, most people are going to head for the exits. Claiming that it was OWS that got people talking about income inequality is kind of silly. And even if that is their one success, it's a pretty meaningless victory when shit like NDAA is being passed. "Did you hear? Corporations run this country..." / "No I didn't Bob, I'm being detained indefinitely at GITMO for arguing with a flight attendant."
> Meanwhile a nation-wide protest movement has at the very least succeeded in planting the issue of systemic economic injustice into mainstream public discourse on a daily basis.
Not a single person has mentioned OWS (in a non ironic sense) to me in probably more than a month. In that time, the internet fought tooth and nail to stop something they disagreed with, and they at least saw some semblance of success. And while the bill has only been delayed, it's quite clear that the 'hands on' approach to protesting is more effective than shitting in public places and getting beat up by the police.
As a disclaimer, I did originally have high hopes for OWS. The people were passionate, and they had the energy needed. But their lack of direction and purpose shortly became apparent, and their almost A.D.D. like inability to focus on something became laughable. They would become so easily distracted by petty violence and police abuse that 90% of the occupy videos on YouTube are about the police. Which of course resulted in the majority of media attention being given to local police issues and not the widespread economic corruption they original fought against.
Once it became apparent that the occupy groups weren't going to try and shift their attention or direct themselves towards a goal, the whole thing deteriorated into a repetitive circus of hide and go seek with local police. Ultimately, they succeeded in removing any momentum they had and have literally become stagnant.
I was a part of Occupy Oakland, and even though we had the worst police action, I completely agree with oldstranger. It became bizarre when Berkeley students earnestly urged everyone to help the other protestors "find a place to sleep tonight, even at your own home", when at least a third of the protestors were permanently homeless.
And to what extent that's the case, the seeds of another Lenin or Robespierre, to slaughter the "1%" wholesale for the perceived greater good, have been planted.
Scapegoating the rich, or "bankers", or some ethnic group that's associated with the above, is a tactic we've seen before, and never leads to anything good.
I dont get the hatred that people like yourself have for the occupy protesters. If you think it is ineffective then you dont have to participate, they disagree and are not bothering you, you have no right telling people what to do.
Not to mention that the whole military analogy is ridiculous. The protesters are essentially "allowed" to do nothing, but the police are "allowed" to do almost anything they want. How does this apply to military battles at all?
Agreed, I am all for reform but we need to outsmart them, from what I've read lately it seems online activity, like that of Reddit, has effected more change than the in-person protests. The problem is that change won't happen overnight, its a gradual process to awaken more and more people to whats actually going on and get each person to do their small part to help change things.
> their ground breaking discovery...leave and then come back.
Or move around, don't give into the tendency to push against the line of the riot police. Not a bad idea. Sometimes obvious things because obvious only in retrospect.
> And maybe play some music.
Music in general is very effective at keeping up morale.
I don't know if this is a difference between UK and US police tactics, or if it's specific to Portland - I also don't know if it's the case that the difference was caused by not caring as much or just by not being as successful: UK police have done a much better job in the past, and rendered this article nonsense.
The key difference:
> Since we had no clear destination, the police were unable to get ahead of us and set up roadblocks.
If the police have such small numbers that they cannot afford to take any manpower away from the back of the march then yes, obviously this is the case. But really, with police vans offering fast transport there is no reason they cannot prevent a moving demonstration from moving. Obviously, budget comes into play, for example police helicopters can help them see what is going on and help them create tactics to counter it.
An example of what I'm talking about is Kettling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling), a term which has only really gained popularity in the press in the last few years, but police (at least in the UK) have used this method for a hell of a long time - not always as viciously as the image most people think of for the term now, that of demonstrators being stuck and not allowed out for hours and hours.
As a Brit now living in US, I came here to mention Kettling too. (Kettling is when the police entirely surround a protest group and will not let anyone enter or leave for many many hours).
Unlike the other comment on this sub-thread, I don't see any reason why Kettling wouldn't work here in the US (sadly) if the police used it. The density of the streets in UK doesn't come into it when you consider the Kettling that took place in Oxford Circus, London during May Day riots a few years ago.
I think the issue for Kettling in the US is that police here rely more on aggression and fear of attack (the heavy infantry, as the OP puts it) then strategy and tactical superiority. As the OP observes, this then goes horribly wrong for the Police when they are forced to assert that aggression physically on protestors.
The other issue for Kettling here in US is constitutional rights. In the UK the police will Kettle a crowd for hours - which in real terms mean they will not let you out even if you decide to give up protesting. This is frankly as a punitive action more than anything else. My guess is constitutionally the police might not be able to do this to undetained, unarrested citizens.
In my experiences with NYPD blockades as a passerby they typically forcefully imply rather than directly state you're not allowed through, and if you insist I've always seen them sheepishly give up.
The whole point with Kettling, which kinda makes it punitive, is that they are 100% clear that you are not leaving the enclosed pen they have created.
Sometimes the kettling can go on for 6+ hrs and even with protestors demanding toilet breaks, water or medical issues from standing up for so long, the police have refused them to leave.
I think this may have to do with cultural and geographic distances. U.S. cities, for the most part, may not be as easy to do something like kettling in as most are less dense than U.K. cities and may simply have more open space to cover to effectively "kettle" people and contain them to one area. Also, although the police are clearly acting as if they are militants at war, they still don't want the non-protesting population to feel as if they are under martial law so sectioning off a large part of a city with police in riot gear and chasing protestors around to where everyone sees this going on would probably hurt their cause more than help it.
You shouldn't discount 25 years of experience trying to control football (soccer) hooligans in the UK has given the police a lot of experienced bodies and equipment (i.e. horses) to help implement such tactics.
Plus, in the UK the cops aren't generally armed with anything more than a club. So they have to use their heads a bit more.
Plus, in the UK the cops aren't generally armed with anything more than a club. So they have to use their heads a bit more.
I attended riot-control training in the Marines: from the way things look on teevee the cops are doing pretty much what we trained to do.
Guns are out[1]. Clubs, chemical agents, are in. Using your head is the order of the day.
Because it only takes one guy not using his head, throwing a CS grenade into the crowd, upwind from your lines, to ruin your whole day.
[1] Let me (slightly) expand on the guns thing and Marines. We _had_ rifles in the Marines, but doctrine and training had us running around without ammunition, or with ammunition kept in pouches, and only allowed to be used with permission of a commissioned officer.
Yea, its two different situations completely, U.S. police often look like military combatants by the gear they wear and often seem to view themselves as urban military units. While this is horrible and an obvious sign of our country going down the shitter, it does make them have to be more conscious of how they use force because it looks so bad to the general public to see images of cops in riot gear who are armed to the teeth chasing around protestors.
and generally only armed with batons outside of low-human rights countries due to the obvious danger of losing control of weapons amidst violent crowds.
I wasn't talking just about riot situations, U.S. police look sort of like this (especially where I am in Arizona) all the time, except without the masks.
Is this now state-wide or still only within the "Constitution-Free Zone" within 200 miles of Mexico's border?
I was in Nogales looking for property in winter of '04, and I noted how many of the law enforcement were all dolled up in their military-like gear. This was before the checkpoints, so I never got too close. Still... if I wasn't white and driving a giant, made-in-America pickup truck, I certainly would not have felt too welcome in the area.
I'm in Phoenix.. IMO this state is insane, the government here really does deserve the scorn they get from the rest of the U.S., I am already planning my move out, I moved here a year and a half ago as it has a low cost of living, warm climate, etc and thought I would give it a shot but there is something very dark going on here with the government.
In my home town they had some kind of occupy stuff going on lately. But the police used their superior Sun Tzu art of war strategy and picked their battle wisely. They didn't pick this one. The occupation faded away as winter came, no police resources wasted on nonviolent park-sitting.
Budget is the biggest factor. That's why there will be no end to Occupy. It's a war of attrition. The Occupiers want to force anarchy across the U.S. by collapsing police departments in each city.
So here's HN in 2012: the Hiring Thread, which leads this month with a chorus of comments about how effective HN has been for finding people awesome jobs or companies awesome candidates, is at the bottom of the front page just a few hours after submission.
Meanwhile, "Occupy Portland's Dec 3rd Tactic to Neutralize Police" is at the top.
It's unsurprising. The kinds of people who are interested in Occupy protest tactics are very vociferously interested. The kinds of people who are interested in the hiring thread aren't nearly as engaged with that topic (or, those who are aren't numerous). "Real", on-topic HN threads are at a systemic disadvantage to advocacy topics like Occupy.
1) To the best of my knowledge, I've never gotten a gig out of the freelancer thread in the past six months, although I am a full-time freelancer. The thread is essentially a list of facts and does not expose me to any new ideas, which would be forgivable if I consistently got gigs out of it, but I do not. As for its cousin the Hiring Thread, I am not nor do I know anyone actively searching for full-time employment (quite the opposite, I know dozens of desperate employers who are desperate for a reason). Job inquiries seem to follow me everywhere I go: to developer events, to my various inboxes, to my phone, etc, and many developers in the tech hub in which I live share the same sentiment. This may be a local phenomena, but it is my experience.
2) I am not an occupier (and FWIW not really a fan). The article was not overly political. It discussed protesting from a tactical point of view and exposed me to a new idea (which may very well be an old idea to others). It is of personal interest because I have been working on pathfinding lately, and this is, essentially, a distributed pathfinding implementation. I wonder if there is a reasonable attack on this kind of strategy or if the strategy is applicable to other protests (Arab Spring, etc.) I think that the discussion quality and level of improvement to my life is going to be a lot higher on this article than on the hiring thread.
I don't participate in the freelancer thread (which is a new development) but I don't so much have to make the case for the Hiring thread, since (like I said) it leads this month with testimonials about how awesome the hiring thread is.
The quality of discussion on this article is already poor. That's also not surprising, because while the ostensible topic (tactics) is interesting, it's an advocacy article on an advocacy site and is mostly a coatrack for Occupy --- so, again unsurprisingly, it's not allowed for anyone to question the idea on this thread without starting a debate about the value of Occupy.
Think about it for a second and realize that any political story can be shoehorned into a "tactical" narrative; horse-race politics (which I follow like my siblings follow White Sox Baseball) are also full of tactics; there's a whole NYT subsite for political nerdery (fivethirtyeight) --- I highly recommend it, but would flag most 538 stories submitted to HN as well.
The argument that any given political story is "something that hackers would find interesting" and not "just politics" is as old as the site. There is also an infinite number of arrangement of cat pictures that satisfy the literal definition of "interesting to hackers". I concede immediately that the guidelines --- I think unfortunately so, and to the clear detriment of the site --- are squishy on this point; it would be better if they simply said "NO POLITICS EVER". They don't. But this is an advocacy piece for Occupy and it is pushing good stuff off the front page of the site.
I did not say that the hiring thread is a total waste of time for all involved, as it is clearly not. But when you solicit "So how has the hiring thread worked for you?" you are not within a mile of a representative sample.
One can make the very same argument that you made about this thread--the sort of people who are interested in the hiring thread are vociferously interested, as either employers or employees, their very livelihood and life satisfaction for years may substantially hang on a comment in that thread. If we are talking about articles that are colored with commercial self-interest or bias, that is the very definition. I would posit that there is a silent majority who are relatively satisfied with their current employment, who read a few comments to see if anyone is hiring to do orthographic drawing theory or NLP in Erlang or topology or [obscure area of research interest] and failing that alt-tab back to Vim to work on arbitrarily less exciting yet still interesting projects.
I don't necessarily disagree with you that it wasn't a particularly high-quality article, that we can do better. But I would not hold out the hiring thread as the example we should follow.
> The argument that any given political story is "something that hackers would find interesting" and not "just politics" is as old as the site. There is also an infinite number of arrangement of cat pictures that satisfy the literal definition of "interesting to hackers".
That is a bit of a red herring.
We geeks have pretty much addressed the technical challenge of "infinite number of arrangement of cat pictures" and have delivered. It is hardly an urgency, at this point. You wanna see cat pictures? I'm sure there are an equally infinite number of image sites, and various frameworks for creating yet even more.
Today, as technologists, we are very likely to find ourselves employed by financial institutions, security services, military, various "social" big brother platforms, and, corporate media. We are, each and everyone, enablers, for better or for worse.
To discuss larger, relevant, sociopolitical matter and events here on HN, with a focus on the tech dimension, is not merely an 'idle interest' for the subset of us that do very much care if it is "for better or worse".
[edit/ps: to be clear, I am addressing the OP's general remark and not this specific article.]
From your comment, I'm still not clear what your exact objection is to the article. You appear to be complaining that an 'Occupy' thread is rated higher than a 'hiring' thread, yet don't explain why you feel that the Occupy thread doesn't 'gratifies one's intellectual curiosity' the way a 'hiring' thread does.
I recognise that the 'hiring' thread is valuable to some people on HN and am glad that the post appears, however for me, the 'hiring' thread does very little to 'gratify my intellectual curiosity' - I'm fortunate enough to have a job and so the thread has almost zero value for me personally.
The 'occupy' post did satisfy me intellectually - I don't have a position on the politics either way, but the explanation of 'battle tactics', how they developed by non-military people and how they can be used 'on the street' was intellectually interesting.
My politics are closer to Occupy's than to the Tea Party's, by a big margin. I'm not asking you to flag the story because I have a problem with the politics.
I'm asking you to flag this story because the argument for it being on the site is a slippery slope that also includes the fundraising dynamics of the Iowa GOP caucus.
Like I said earlier: stories like this have a systemic advantage over most real "hacker news" topics. A "Comparison of 6 USB Stick Micro Dev Boards" --- unquestionably more germane to the site than this --- is welcome by everyone, but passionately supported by few. Occupy (or Tea Party) advocacy is largely unwelcome on the site by charter, but passionately supported by enough people to peg stories to the top of the front page.
The result is a site that looks more like 2008 Reddit than 2008 HN. In fact, because HN is doing such a good job attracting the Slashdot "Your Rights Online" crowd, we're seeing more and more stories for which Reddit threads are better than HN's.
I used to think the big problem with 'pg's guidelines were that it was squishy about politics; it should, I thought, be rewritten to say "No politics, no religion, no cute pictures, ever." I still think that. But the better thing for the guidelines to say is even simpler:
I agree with your 'no politics' stance (although does SOPA opposition fall under that?), however, I read the article more as a 'tactics developed by accident' than a Occupy advocacy thread. I guess we have slightly different thresholds on the same slippery slope.
Having said that, I definitely prefer an article on micro dev boards than protest tactics.
Paul Graham clearly likes the SOPA threads. I pick my battles. He owns the site, he's entitled to use it to advance his causes. (My politics overall are leftish, but my politics on SOPA aren't within a mile of the rest of HN).
SOPA seems about as directly relevant to internet startup business as an issue can get. It's not tax or social policy or political campaigning... it's impending legislation that affects the way people have to configure their servers.
So I would support a ban on most political discussion here as long as the very few relevant things like SOPA are exempt.
> The 'occupy' post did satisfy me intellectually - I don't have a position on the
> politics either way, but the explanation of 'battle tactics', how they developed
> by non-military people and how they can be used 'on the street' was
> intellectually interesting.
Read The Art of War (I would recommend some annotated version, can't point to an specific one since I'm only familiar with spanish translations). Then go take part in some picketing, and please please write an article with factual and accurate data about tactics. Mail me, count with my upvote and I'll participate on any discussion related to tactics. This blogpost is factually wrong and amateurish as a discussion on tactics, also full of wishful thinking apologetic of naive ideas about the military power of large groups of protesters.
It's a few hours old, and arguably the most productive recurring thread on the site. Subjectively (but you can take my word for this), the hiring thread used to be pinned to the top for a day --- I presume this was not because of something 'pg punched into a REPL.
> on-topic HN threads are at a systemic disadvantage to advocacy topics like Occupy.
Maybe most HNers are already pretty happy with their jobs and are not looking? I didn't even click that link. Should I have? Now you made me feel guilty.
I clicked on the Occupy link because I think they found a pretty neat trick on how to oppose the riot police. Regardless of your support for the movement, don't you think figuring that out is pretty interesting?
HN generally seems to have become overtly political, especially in its submissions (that make it to the front page).
SOPA obviously has relevance to HN, so I don't mind that at all, but with increasing frequency, political submissions pop up, and I'm sure the submitters are enabled by the amount of upvotes they get with little to no input from mods/admins who clarify HN's stance on political submissions with no relation to the site's field of interest.
I don't mean "HN is getting more like reddit" as a slur, but the lines between the two are becoming more blurred, and the two serve better as separate entities with different topics of interest rather than some soon-to-be-merged hivemind on political matters.
Huh, suddenly very important political discussion is "off-topic"? I'll admit, it isn't standard fare for HN, but I'd say, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
This comment (verbatim, "Oh engineers. Shirking morality again.") is an extremely elegant statement of why political threads, even when they "gratify the intellectual curiosity of hackers", are terrible for HN: they generate comment threads that consist of or are repeatedly sparked by comments like this.
I have a related but different complaint about them: political threads are bad because they bring out a chorus of rose-tinted nostalgia about how HN is going down the drain, is "becoming Reddit", etc., etc. I only hope that y'all copy/paste them instead of wasting effort on writing a new comment to that effect each time. ;-)
The military analogy is broken. The hack isn't to use the superiority of "light infantry" over "heavy infantry", etc. The reason the protestors can "take a park" even when the police oppose them is because they operate in a political system where the police can't fire on crowds. You probably think this is always a good thing. That's the hack.
As far as the less lethal situation, using impact rounds can result in death. Fluidity of the crowd, improper use of the launcher, pure dumb luck can all play a role in where rounds land.
People can, and have, died from direct fire with less lethals including the FN-303 Paint Marking launcher, various 12 gauge skip fire and direct fire munitions, 37mm gas munitions, and 40mm direct fire less lethal and gas munitions.
While some rounds are designed for close quarters direct fire, many are not, and having a 40mm CS grenade hit you upside the head can be lethal.
As some kind of thumb rule, less than lethal usually means that about 2% die and 5% don't get affected. You can make it more effective so that everybody is affected, but then the percentage of dead people rises. Or other way around. Usually police should use "less than lethal" weaponry only in situations where casualties are acceptable.
Please if you think you will ever take part in a protest, for the sake of your own safety and that of your co-protestors, don't read this article. Or if you already did, don't take it seriously.
It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people.
I do agree with most of what Occupy is about, but if the writer of this post is trying to make any political point, he is failing.
Also, I think that a blog and an HN thread are so not the place to learn about how to safely occupy public space and how to participate in a protest, that I simply don't understand how hard some are trying for it to be that place...
>It has a misleading title, and poor and dangerous content. Protests and police columns so don't work that way that it's actually dangerous for this to be on the front page and upvoted by so many people.
Why is his content wrong? I'm not saying it isn't - I just think more people would pay heed to your warning if you can give concrete reasons (plus, I'm curious).
You can find some of my opinion about the content in my other reply in this thread. Also, the whole rummaging about light infantry and heavy infantry is completely wrong, short of some movies I really don't know where the author actually saw the kind of formation he seems to think is standard.
He also gets retreats completely wrong. If your adversary is competent he will actually encourage a retreat since his objective is not decimating your forces but keeping ground, that is why it's always easy to run away from the police in protests... not because retreat "conveys a tactical superiority". If you are lets say holding higher ground, or for example participating in a siege, retreat may mean you are coming back home completely decimated.
Getting further into this would sort of actually be against my own perception of HN not being the place to discuss how to securely protest. I'll also like to keep the internet as free as possible of myself advocating civil disobedience in a country I'm not a citizen of.
What annoys me most about the Occupy movement is that they aren't even intellectually active enough to study other contemporary protest movements. I'm staggered at the number of people involved in Occupy who genuinely see police as a bunch of cretinous thugs and don't imagine that they might organise international conferences or share case studies.
Public order policing has been a game of cat-and-mouse for decades, following the movements of European anarchists around the usual circuit of Mayday protests, G8 conferences and arms fairs. It's a highly evolved field and there are extensive playbooks on both sides.
This strategy was devised years ago, in response to police lines being used to control and prevent marching. A core group, usually a Black Bloc, lead other protesters in a fast march, choosing their direction only at the last possible second. The goal is to move faster than police dispatchers can react, preventing the police from establishing organised lines quickly enough. The police response in the UK is pre-emptive kettling[1], in much of the rest of the world a mix of roadblocks and simple brutality. Unless the protesters are angry enough to run into a baton charge or prepared enough to run into CS gas, it's a completely ineffective tactic.
Some commenters seem to believe that kettling would be illegal under US law; It may well be, but that hasn't stopped the extensive use of "free speech zones"[2] to pre-emptively restrict the movement of protesters. Without a Supreme Court ruling, there's nothing to stop Portland PD or anyone else from using kettles.
1. Underestimates the superiority and effectiveness of the Command and Control of the police force
2. Overestimates the superiority of a mob vs a phalanx.
3. Makes generalized assumptions over why the police allowed them to stay.
4. Assumes that the police will not use their formation with calvary (automobiles, aricraft, and actual horses) as a means of denying the flank or the retreat.
This reads like someone who just went through a college course in ancient combat and has little practical experience in the matter of Command and Control or strategic thinking.
They're still around? Why dont they go protest where it matters in Washington infront of Congress et al instead of on private property or places that make small businesses lose business.
Sounds like the way Critical Mass (cycling) rides in Chicago work - with no pre-set route the police join in and make sure no one gets hurt but they can't really push the ride in one direction or another - the 'hive' decides where to go. With 5,000 to 10,000 people it's a pretty huge event/example.
Critical Mass is a good example of how not to gain sympathy for one's cause. Blocking traffic, running red lights, and shouting at or kicking cars of people trying to commute home after a long workday does not endear bicyclists to drivers. In San Francisco, the riders are sometimes known as "Critical Massholes".
Why the military tactics and metaphors? Many occupiers seem more interested in "fuckin' shit up" than expressing a message. In Oakland, the city was willing to let people assemble every day (when other people would actually see their protest), but the occupiers insisted that anything less than camping in Frank Ogawa Plaza was defeat.
If you want to destroy civilization, this is a pretty good start. Good practice anyway. But if you want to make positive change, forcing police to resort to brutality to restore order for people who are just trying to live their lives is stupid.
Edit: instead of downvoting, try to explain why this is a good idea.
He tried organizing in Albany, Georgia that went uneventfully and without getting much attention or building momentum. So he started holding protests in jurisdictions in the South where he knew the local authorities would violently overreact, thus ensuring heavy national media coverage and a counter-reaction of horrifying the public at their treatment.
Your argument seems to be that anything other than obedience of authority means destruction of civilization, and sounds hyperbolic and reactionary. Apply that principle to apartheid, British Raj, Tahrir, etc. and see how it looks.
Non-violent resistance to injustice is one thing. Indefinitely evading police for little other purpose, that I can see, of getting in the way is another. I'm not quite sure where the line is, but this kind of thing scares me.
If a person or group deliberately incites law enforcement to escalate the level of violence in the performance of their duty, are they not partially responsible for that violence? Are their goals worth having that responsibility? They seem to be doing it specifically to get a "PR loss by the police department". What purpose does that serve, in the long run, except to undermine people's respect for the government?
Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government. It is supplemented by force/violence in various degrees, but most of the time it's only conditioning and conscience that keeps people in check. The restraints of force and conditioning are swept aside by just such measures as these. The article frankly uses military terminology. These are the tools of governmental overthrow, and I believe they are being used recklessly.
> Civilization hangs on a fine thread of voluntary compliance to the government.
That sounds pretty much exactly backwards from any society I want to be a part of. I don't exist in service of a government, but can choose to tolerate a government that provides value to me.
I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about how to design a society, I'm talking about a necessary aspect of the relationship between government and the governed. Simply, the government cannot force you to do what it wants all the time. It's impossible, even for brutal totalitarian governments. A few slip through the nets.
For a light example, think about speeding, or carpool lane compliance. Most of the time, there is actually no one to stop or punish you for speeding or driving in the carpool lane with the wrong number of people. Most people do the right thing anyway. This is good.
So any compliance with its laws is largely voluntary, based on, among other things, the value provided by the government and the obvious benefits to everyone if everyone follows the law.
I think you'll find that obeying such things doesn't come from deference to authority, but rather peer pressure combined with a recognition of the justice of such regulations. The reason I don't speed in urban streets isn't because I want to obey the government; it's because I'll look like an ass, endangering other road users.
I think there's a deeper issue. I suspect you have confused mechanism with purpose. Government coercion is a mechanism for enforcing system goals, where hopefully those goals are agreed upon in a democratic or enlightened fashion. But it is not the government coercion that is good; it is the goals. It is right that government coercion be resisted when the goals are not noble; and doing so does not risk society falling apart, because it doesn't attack what makes society work.
It's not mere "conditioning and conscience" that keeps people in check. The biggest thing that keeps people in check is actually social norms and risking the disapproval of your peers. And those are surprisingly strong forces.
And if you think the kinds of disobedience we're talking about here risk government overthrow, you haven't seen what governments are capable of doing to stay in power. It's humorous to read about Americans thinking their second amendment right to bear arms defends themselves from the excesses of government. Governments are a lot more resilient than that. The real risk to governments comes from military avenues: mutinies, coups, invasion. A government with nuclear arms (i.e. MAD deterrence of invasion) and in control of a loyal military will not be overthrown by its citizens.
But I do agree with you that what we're seeing is corrosive to trust in government. But the answer isn't to bow one's head, go home and be a good little consumer. The answer is to demand that government changes. In a democracy, a big part of that publicity-seeking actions. Ideally, we'd be seeing dialogue and debate, not riot police and polarizing denunciations.
I guess I include peer pressure in "conditioning". It's not that I think Occupy Portland will result, directly, in the overthrow of the United States government. I said they're the tools of government, but they're not being used forcefully yet, just waved around in the air by people who don't seem to know what they're playing with. "Corrosive to trust in government" is a good way of putting what bothers me about this.
We do need to demand change in our government. If we're going to act in unison, that's where we need to do it. I just don't see the games described in the article as being anything but destructive.
What drew me to this article was it's discussion of the tactics a unorganized group can do and try all at once. A neat superposition of several topics.
unfortunately any mass movement is dependent on being able to apply political pressure. It might work if there is a growing momentum and you end up with an 'orange' revolution. Most likely it's going to simply die out by itself unless it can actually transform into a political force.
Being in Spain I can tell you the protests accomplished nothing, changed nothing politically and ended up dissolving themselves once it got cold.
Yes, I personally think that if these Occupy movements result in organizing long-term institutions which help people, then they're successful. Lurid riot porn is not a victory condition.
One problem is the attitude mentioned in the article: "This has been a show of bravado that has the tactical benefits of providing media coverage of the brutal methods of police and the benefit of draining the resources of the oppressor by forcing them to incur the expense of arresting and prosecuting people for trivial offenses." (Keep in mind that the US imprisons its populace far more than any other nation, so this is no joke.) I read this rebuttal recently:
"Getting arrested as an unavoidable consequence of standing up for a cause is noble; getting arrested as a voluntary, symbolic act is widely considered bizarre, at best. Moreover, it frustrates huge sectors of the movement who see an opportunity cost to the resources that go into unnecessary jail support, bail, and legal costs. Perhaps worst of all, voluntary arrest is seen by members of especially targeted communities as flaunting arrestees’ race and class privilege."
Yeah, those examples are discussed in the ZCommunications article, as effective in only some situations. ("True as this is, don’t forget that these movements were addressing state and societal brutality against entire groups of people as the primary focus of their strategy; state violence was thus an illustration of their point. In the case of a holistic movement primarily focused on elite rule instead of state repression, police violence is a distraction. It may earn you sympathies, but it does not help to make your point in any clearly illustrative manner, as it did in these examples.")
On this point: while they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the Occupy movement has a lot of structural similarities to the Tea Part movement.
The sad thing about grassroots politics in the US is that the conservative grassroots movements, like Tea Party, form loose, non-hierarchical yet highly organized coalitions where as the liberals end up going lowest-common-denominator and form protest groups.
The problem is that the political system in America is geared up to accept pressure from political groups like Tea Party but isn't particularly affected by protect groups on the street. As a liberal I find it depressing that folks refuse to take on the political system at it's own game like the Tea Partiers have done.
The Tea Party people think they're opposing particular liberal policies.
The Occupy movement is rebelling against an entire POWER STRUCTURE, the entire hierarchy backed by corporate funding, which funding also pays the GOP apparatchiks that started the Tea Party.
This piece of advice will get people fined (and possibly arrested) for violating noise ordinances in many municipalities. You're better off marching silently.
The police were already announcing that people marching through the streets and blocking traffic were going to be arrested anyway, so it's not like marching silently would save them from the threat of arrest.
I think Occupy is the most interesting (and, yes, annoying, but that's part of the method) political development in recent history. This article, however, was very long, with little meaningful content, and I don't see how it's of particular interest to HN. Flagged.
On another note, pay attention to whats happening over on Reddit and their attempt to unseat Paul Ryan in protest of SOPA/PIPA. They're putting their collective time, effort, and (most importantly) money into something that might actually have an effect. Ultimately, the 72 hours or so that Reddit has taken up this initiative is already appearing more effective than months of misguided OWS noise.
Going back even further, look at the Internet's success with GoDaddy and the few other companies changing their stance on SOPA. Get out of the streets already and go actually make a difference with some concentrated focus and brain power.