RESIST. INSIST. STAND TOGETHER. BUILD. NEVER SURRENDER.
via @occupytheory -
"RESIST. INSIST. STAND TOGETHER. BUILD. NEVER SURRENDER.
On September 17th, 2011 Occupy Wall Street was born. A hundred people occupied Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and opened a space for imagination. We began to share food, clothing, and shelter. We sought refuge in the shell of a concrete jungle and found community. Inspired by our actions, occupations began throughout
the globe. In a matter of months nearly all of them were crushed by the weight of repression and co-optation, but occupy cannot be stopped. It is a collective unleashing of anger and frustration at a dying capitalist system and points toward a new world. Let us create this world together.
"Read. Share. Distribute. Tidal." - Tidal Occupy Theory, occupytheory.org
Tidal 3 is out on the streets and online! Read the latest edition at
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8k8g5Bb3BxdS2EyTDcwR0NRV0k/edit?pli=1
Pass it on.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=397312870336483&set=a.187967227937716.47329.184749301592842&type=1&theater
= new reply since forum marked as read
so I looked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Chakravorty_Spivak
What is interesting about postcolonialism in relation to occupy is that the tide has turned and progressives in West are now learning democracy from indigenous peoples instead of trying to "educate" and "civilize" them. 
We want to stop paleo- and neocolonialism by what ever name and we want freedom from the social structures that cause it. That is a tough question for liberal middle classes who wish well but can't handle the fact that their consumerist way of life is materially dependent from neocolonialist structures of oppression and exploitation and escalating destruction of Earth's ecosystem. So it is not surprising that eurocentric liberal middle classes - globally one percenters - have to large extent left the global movement after a short visit, and are looking for finishing their race to the bottom before they rejoin.
In more philosophical terms, the "destabilization of western ways of thinking" refers to European alienated metaphysics of subjecthood or "ego". But as ego is a defense mechanism of collective insanity, it's rather useless to try to talk to it sense and expect that it would stop behaving like what it is.
1) I find the whole exercise futile. If a plain statement of fact, e.g. that Western (or any other) consumerism is dependent from neocolonialist exploitation of so called 3rd and 4rh worlds associates with guilt trip and produces emotional discomfort, that is not a reason to stop speaking truth (and feeling empathy with the emotional discomfort). We know the crimes past and present and believe in the power of forgiving, not least for our own health, the issue is to stop the crimes from continuing so that we can go on living - on this planet.
2) - Fair trade as a whole is positive step, but not without problems. Nigeria producing "fair trade" flowers to European market (to get cash to pay interests on the neocolonialist debts) instead of food for local people is just one example of the problems.
- Been very closely involved in the local food movement so yes, it rings a bell.
- What about my computer? I'm not anti-technology, just anti-technocracy and hopefully you and others soon find way to make internet hardware production and upkeep sustainable material cycle. And by sustainable I don't mean bunch of poor Chinese people in extreme poverty recycling the waste from West with the risk for their health and life.
- I've mentioned also Terra Preta, but the main point is not to try to fix the problem by creating new problems but to stop causing it.
3) Liberal middle class is welcome to join but not to take over. What they choose to do is of course for them to decide.
4) Speaking in the frame of reference you brought up, European philosophy (phenomenology of Heidegger, Derrida etc. etc.) self-criticizing European metaphysics. I've read and discussed them and lost deeper interest and moved on when I found out that the core of their criticism and search has been expressed much more clearly e.g. in Buddhist philosophy.
and all too common everywhere (also on DU), so I don't doubt it manifests also in Occupy meetings. But it's certainly not all that people talk about in Occupy assemblies.
But back to the issue, it was IIRC Zerzan that told an anecdote of Kissinger having a talk with well-meaning liberals and telling them that they can whine about US imperialism all they want, but if they want to continue their consumerist American way of life, they need "bad imperialist" guys like Kissinger to kick 3rd world ass and deliver the desired colonial goods. Zerzan drew his conclusions and started to think and speak about what was then coined as anarcho-primitivism.
