@joanwalsh tried to warn the world that #Occupy Oakland was going of the tracks in November #osf @jeanquan

First, let me lay out my bias: I have an absolute commitment to nonviolence in social movements, for moral, tactical, strategic and political reasons. And I include most forms of property destruction as violence (though there’s disagreement about that) because people get hurt, even killed, however inadvertently, when “revolutionaries” start breaking windows and torching the symbols of oppression. Meanwhile, the righteous destroyers of property make themselves judge and jury, deciding whose property deserves to be trashed. So for me, from a distance, once Occupy Oakland refused to condemn those who advocated and practiced vandalism and violence last week, it began to lose its moral and political power.

What I saw Sunday afternoon didn’t reassure me. The debate over nonviolence had polarized the camp, and the protesters who wanted Occupy Oakland to distance itself from vandalism and worse were themselves becoming pariahs. The minute I arrived, I stumbled into a heated small group meeting about planning a Nov. 19 march with labor unions, where one loud, angry faction was trying to eject a union activist because he had allegedly worked with Mayor Jean Quan’s husband on a community organizing project, and had continued to be a vocal proponent of officially condemning violence and vandalism. In the middle of the meeting the group announced it was closed to media and tried to eject a KGO-radio reporter, rather ingeniously, by humming a jazzy tune I didn’t recognize a cappella into his microphone so he couldn’t record their deliberations. The reporter wandered away, and I did too.

When I circled back later, the motion to eject the union activist had failed — but the angry losing faction left the meeting. Then the union activist departed too, after someone politely asked him to leave. At that point fewer than half the original participants remained to plan the march with labor. The energy for the project had dissipated thanks to an effort to narrow the movement, not widen it. That seemed to symbolize a larger trend at the embattled encampment.

by Joan Walsh

(Source: salon.com)