The Tactic of Occupation & the Movement of the 99%

from AlterNet

In the past week and a half, we’ve seen more and more news stories focusing on the physical logistics of occupation, including the problems and challenges. News outlets are presenting the tactic of occupation as if the tactic were the message and the movement itself. And our opponents are making some headway in negatively branding occupation and occupiers.

To navigate this challenge, it is important that we recognize a few things about our relationship to the tactic of physical occupation:

• It has already accomplished more than any of us imagined.
• It is incredibly resource-intensive to maintain.
• It will not serve us forever (indeed, it’s utility may already be waning).
• We will have to come up with other popular expressions of the values of this movement.

We have to distinguish conceptually between our tactics, our message, and our movement. Of these three, our tactics should be the thing we are least attached to. In oppositional struggle, it is critical to maintain the initiative; to keep one’s opponents in a reactive state. This is not accomplished by growing overly attached to any particular tactic—no matter how well it worked the first time—and thereby doing exactly what our opponents expect us to do.

We need to move from “We Occupy” as a defining characteristic of the movement, to “We Demand Social Justice!”