Occupy Berkeley peep describes the serious social chaos in last days of camp

Jasper sez
‘#Occupy camps drew a lot of lumpen problems. The civil society of camps were not capable of solving the problems of hate and assault that the lumpen brought. I visited Occupy Berkeley a few times, including its last days. It had devolved into Lord of The Flies. Berkeley occupier Maxina Ventura has helpfully written about this phenomenon. This is reproduced below.’
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Maxina Ventura of Occupy Berkeley http://oaklandradicals.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/openletter/#comment-83
… I have been writing back and forth with another Egyptian activist who has been witness also to the horrors in Egypt as people are demanding some of the most basic things in life. I get angry when I am around people acting like every day at Occupy Oakland the cops are coming at them as though it’s a surprise. They are doing some wonky idea of civil disobedience, I guess, but aren’t bothering to learn about any history of c.d. in this country, let alone elsewhere, and are about acting out against mommy and daddy (commonly heard at OB: “We don’t like parents”). Another 200 Syrian protesters were killed a week ago or so, and these young people here are trying to create cop scenes. At OB, I watched the eviction unfold after packing up as much as we could of our kitchen gear, tables, and various other resources. No riot gear, just a couple cops up front, doing the city manager’s bidding. Yes, they could have decided not to work that night, but remember that by this time, most of the core of OB couldn’t even defend trying to keep the encampment part of OB because this group had torn things so completely apart, creating a place way too dangerous for my kids and me, for instance, to continue camping out. That says a lot. And yes, one of them lost it, you might be aware, using a club at someone’s neck. Yes, sick, and he is a particularly violent one who especially should have no job on the streets, but other than that, how many hear the back story of how things came down that night? The eviction notice was 100% unequivocal. A letter from a city council person days before someone had knifed someone in that circle, had suggested that if the violence that had erupted was not quelled, the city was likely to have no choice (as they would put it) other than to shut down the camp. The knifing days after that letter was the final straw that broke the camel’s back and resulted in the eviction notice based on the spike in violence since that group had arrived. This was not an unexpected event but more important, this was precisely what this group said it wanted. The cops as a group came in very quietly, not posturing and not escalating beyond the fact that they were removing tents, but remember, OB people had removed our tents, info booth, kitchen gear, etc. There were but a few tents left as most people, including most of that group, actually, had taken their tents, taken OB kitchen gear, and had run. These people had repeatedly NOT id’d as OB, kept saying they were OO. OO people coming to OB to visit over weeks were giving us their apologies that we now were dealing with the very ones who’d brought down OO. Anyway, when the cops came, they were absolutely swarmed by people who had nothing to do with OB, had never set foot in OB in many cases, as some said when I asked. They’d responded to some call put on on Facebook. The people who set in motion this whole thing were for the most part non-existent in the camp that night. They were off like a dirty shirt, as my dad used to say. Nowhere to be seen. The big hulking question we as activists need to confront is whether we must accept anyone at all in our organizing circles and act in solidarity with them. For me the answer is: absolutely not. I can act in compassion for people without being forced to spend enormous (or any) time with them. We live in a wrecked society. Only the most pious Catholic anarchists I know would be willing to live with some of the people with whom I don’t want to spend time in the same room. But that is their choice, and the same people do not expect that I am going to invite into my family’s home some of these people; they recognize that each person does what she/he can do. But the deep question is whether we are willing to allow people who bully to have their way, and what do we suppose we should gain by doing so? For those who are young alienated people on the streets including people id’ing as Blac Bloc, in a way it isn’t so deep a political thing as people might want to make it; these kids haven’t been parented and I feel sorry for them (our society faces rich and poor kids and kids in between all being abandoned to consumerism) but speaking as a parent here I’d say what they need is to be stopped cold in their tracks. They are looking for boundaries and how funny that the movement that could change their lives for the better instead lets them keep spiraling out of control. It’s what I associate with liberalism; refuse to confront problems for what they are, then act all befuddled when you have a mess on your hands. On the other hand, perhaps this is the deepest of politics because it goes to the intersection of family and society. In a way, they are welcome to do what they want, if alone, right? I mean, if they don’t drag others into it. But what goes on here is that people are afraid of taking the reins and saying, “Just stop it. People are dying in many countries around the world fighting for something serious and you’re doing what?” These people’s actions are cheap and selfish. That’s my bottom line. Put out facts about the dangers of the chemical cocktail called tear gas. Don’t throw things from the middle of a crowd so that tear gas gets thrown in, launching more people into MCS. Take personal responsibility. If you think throwing bottles and breaking windows is a good strategy, I’m all for hearing your analysis. I have stood up publicly for people who have chosen breaking windows as a tactic, in some cases, when it has been done in a way which does not threaten to cause harm to anyone by the action, or responses to it. So talk to me. I am part of the Plowshares movement, for godsakes. I believe in property destruction, certainly, but not randomly and once again, not if it means that anyone might be harmed as a result of my action. I have repeatedly, and within this movement, begged to differ with people who say that breaking windows is violent. I give them some of my analysis and though they might feel differently, at least their minds seem to open some. What is missing from these people about whom we’ve been speaking is that any sense of personal responsibility is absent from their speech and actions. Solidarity is a word they do not know. In a way, I do not want to afford these people all this energy, but I keep seeing people letting bullies off the hook. I want people to open our minds and dig deeper and stop being afraid, as I think many are, to have to do the hard work of standing behind excluding people from organizing or actions. It doesn’t fit our activist self images. But what I look at is all the really great people who were getting involved who left OB because of those people. It would be tempting to say that these people were not committed enough, or didn’t care, but I would say instead that many of them had better senses of self than many activists and weren’t going to waste their time on a lot of crap, which is that to which things were turning. My hat was off to them for knowing their own limits. That is a skill many of us could stand to develop in our lives. What we endured at Occupy Berkeley when these people arrived was like watching a gang form. People feeling alienated from families and society were banding together to form their sick version of family. They were stealing from everyone, ransacked and stole our most basic kitchen supplies such as pots and propane, and said this was Occupy and they could take anything they wanted. And guess what? Apparently, their perceived right to take anything included women. There was a particular fondness for violence toward women in that crowd, with the strangling of one, attempted rapes, and verbal harassment as icing on the cake. Still, we never called in the cops ourselves as our security team worked to get such perpetrators out of camp (with this group inviting the same people back in) but it was so violent that people within that little circle started calling the cops themselves! For 6 weeks prior we’d kept cops out not because there were no problems but because we chose to take time 24 hours a day to deal straight up with those problems (I was one of those people often up doing middle of the night shifts). I was out there camping with my three kids. But that young crowd was an entitled, bratty, but also distinctly violent crowd and they had as a group the stated intention of getting OB raided. There were some decent people within, trying to affect some internal changes but just about all gave up and left . When we confronted them about their complete lack of solidarity for those who unlike them had no good options, reminding them that if the camp were dismantled all the homeless people who’d gotten help would be tossed back to the streets and the chill nights, they didn’t care. Not one bit of care. So they did their yelling about being evicted, which was precisely what they had repeatedly stated was their goal, then whined that the camp was to be dismantled (they used the word ‘raid’), but they all fled to leave the actually homeless people stranded. It was OB people who helped the actual homeless people get packed up and made sure as many as possible had at least tarps with them, as they headed into the hills and back to be under freeway overpasses. There is nothing romantic about allowing immature entitled people to run roughshod over the good work tens of thousands have been doing in just the San Francisco Bay Area. As a parent, I see the movement not “getting” that the kids allowed to bully others gain nothing from it but more alienation. It’s heady times for a few people but won’t be so heady when inmates laugh their heads off at the stupidity of these people when they get to prison. People in jail and prison often have lots to say about actions on the outside and have excellent analysis. I feel sorry for the young people dragged into this stuff, being used. And I keep scratching my head at the enraged comments showing up in Letters to the Editor from parents in suburbs and around the city talking about “those” young people, trying to convince themselves that they played no part in creating the very alienation which leads to young people being vulnerable to agents provocateurs, or those who identify as Blac Bloc and insist that their hiding behind masks and throwing bottles or rocks or molotov cocktails is in any manner acceptable. Maxina Ventura of Occupy Berkeley