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October 08, 2011 | | Comments 2

#OccupyEverywhere but Target Individuals

The problem with Western/Euro-centric capitalism is not that capitalism is inherently evil like so many revolutionaries seem to think.  You’ve got to be able to differentiate between the man and the weapon.  The problem is the short-sighted profit motive as a singular focus and the dehumanization/depersonalization of corporations.  We seem to forget that companies don’t run themselves…people do.  And people can be weak and vulnerable.  Capitalism itself is not the problem…the rugged individualistic mentality of Europeans and how they use the tool of capitalism is the problem.  Therefore, you do not fight corporations.  You fight individuals.

So this is my suggestion to community leaders involved in the #OccupyWallStreet movement.  Marching and protesting is good PR and a good start to the movement and build momentum.  But when you’re ready to start getting actual results and not just news coverage, I suggest the following three tactics:

1) Boycott strategically.  If corporations are the problem, start identifying the worst ones and go after them.  For example, If Coca Cola or Bank of America are the biggest transgressors, then organize a mass boycott of their products/services.  AND with all those people you’ve organized, take them to occupy the corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities of those companies.  When you start costing these companies money, they will react.  The initial reaction will be bad news for whoever it’s targeted at, but if you can withstand it and keep moving they will eventually have to start cooperating or die fighting.

Also, while you’re boycotting certain companies, pick out other companies that you think are doing good.  boycotts are less effective if you don’t give the boycotters an alternative.  So you can tell people to boycott Bank of America, but then you need to find a bank that is not evil to tell people to move their money to (like Carver or Citizens Trust or your local community credit union).

2) Target individuals.  Goldman Sachs is run by people.  Pick out the key decision makers in these Wall Street organizations that you’re protesting and start making their lives difficult.  If done properly, you won’t even have to resort to violence or any physical contact with that person at all….although the threat of violence can be very effective.  Call their phone non-stop to make demands.  Start blasting them on tv, social media, radio, and everywhere you can.  Get hackers to start freezing their assets.  Make up embarrassing stories about them and publish them.  I’m just thinking off the top of my head here, but you get the picture.  If you can’t appeal to these individual’s morals (since they may be non-existent), then you start appealing to their selfishness and survival instincts.  Let them know that there will be consequences for their actions (and inaction in some cases).

But remember to pick the right people to target that actually have the power to change things.  There are a lot of good people working for bad companies that don’t really understand how they’re participating in a destructive organization.  Attacking these people will do no good.  You really need to target the executive level to get anything done.  But also appeal to the rank and file to organize internal company protests and strikes against the destructive practices of their companies.

3) Stop electing dumb asses and corporate lackeys into political office.  Democrats AND Republicans all serve the same people…elite whites.  Democrats and Republicans are like brothers fighting for the same inheritance money from their dying father.  Neither brother is worthy of it.  We have to start supporting different political parties.  You cannot reform the Democratic or Republican parties.  We don’t have to constantly choose between the lesser of two evils.  Best to just toss them out and start new.

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  1. kitsilano says:

    We do agree with most of your statement.

    Your tactical advice for achieving positive change is well thought out and even generous to the opponents of World Equality.

    One concern we have in respect of your points is that your Capitalist strategy deals with the problem as only an Euro-American phenomenon. You have accepted that the future will be American. You rebuke some Corporations as evil and applaud others which meet your approval. The USA itself is a mere Corporation driven by the policy of dividing the Planet between the Haves and the Have-nots.

    We believe that root of the world economic problem is a simple matter of an incomplete socio-economic model which incorrectly defines success as parochial happiness and that meanwhile, economic failure is simply the incompetence of individuals, who in your model, need to be driven out of power. We would not blame individuals until they have been taught a new culture and then tried to impose their definitions of power on that model.

    Life competes with life, not with virtue; success must be a matter of the whole of our Human existence when taken as a complete ecology. Failure to apply surpluses and profits to proper social institutions means power has not been allowed to complete its natural course from Spirit to Humankind and then, through a celebratory process, back to Spirit again. What is skimmed off by opportunists is no longer available to those political processes which support the world-wide reproduction of the most beneficial aspects of our modern culture and so, general inequity will continue to increase as a constant until the natural ecology is repaired by a Religious revival or nature is allowed to reduce the population of humans by collapsing the world back into another dark age.

    Both good and evil are products of normal competition for power so let it be agreed that good and evil are always relative. Power is defined as what produces and controls a given future. Capital is a tool in the process, not a product. Culture is how we reproduce either what is good or what is bad.

    All indigenous cultures retain inherent ‘spiritual’ references which suddenly became diminished in Europe and around the world under the Christian Religion because that faith served to increase the personal powers of individuals but then allowed the Religion of their founder, Jesus, to be corrupted into this modern mercantile economy that is wholly driven by the extraction of power from the larger social community.

    There is a special role for Black People in restoring a pure and holistic economy because no world economy will ever succeed unless it is connected to Mother Africa.

  2. Travis says:

    Your perspective is gravely flawed. Capitalism is both part of the problem as well as a manifestation of a larger problem of a spiritual nature. Your logic is akin to saying “slavery” isn’t the problem, slave owners are the problem. Hence “capitalism” isn’t the problem, capitalist are the problem. Really?!?!? That’s just moronic and should be called out as such. Any system so spiritually bankrupt that it not only allows or facilitates but actually encourages human beings to be considered “capital” is a problem. I could expound on my perspective but I am not sure that I can say anything that Kitsilano has not already expressed.

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