#direct activism

This response got really long, so I'm going to put this list of books/documentaries that have really influenced my perspective of the world whether or not they have influenced by personal brand of action/activism at the top (since things can definitely influence you without your knowledge). TDLR for the rest: I don't think this is exactly the response you were looking for, but I hope it gives you something about how I developed the way I think.

Documentaries:

The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis - Four part documentary on how consumerism was engineered via psychology by a cousin of Freud I believe. Crazy ass stuff everyone should be aware of - including how they got a bunch of independent and liberal voters to vote for Reagan.

The Jangmadang Generation by Sokeel Park and Chad Vickery - A documentary focusing on the stories of various North Korean refugees. It's important because it focuses on their personal experiences and humanity rather than the country itself. I got to meet Sokeel via Zoom. :)

Crip Camp by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham - The story of a bunch of disabled kids who met at a summer camp for disabled kids and later met up again as activists. This is how I found out we have common disability accommodations like ramps leading down to crosswalks because a bunch of disabled people stormed a state government building and refused to leave for days no matter what was done to them. Wonder why they don't talk about that in history class?

Books:

Plastic Ocean by Capt. Charles Moore with Cassandra Phillips - The discovery and study of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch

Exit West by Moshin Hamid - Issues of immigration and refugees seen through a fantasy world.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith - Crazy story involving love, science, genetics, religious radicalism, class issues, and more.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks - Detailed accounts of various mental illnesses/brain disorders that affect perception (caviat, these are more from the doctor's observation, so keep in mind these are not full experiences of the patients)

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea - Graphic novel by a Canadian man who had a three month work contract as an animator in Pyongyang.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren - The story of a woman's journey through STEM and family trauma. I love it because it features a truly platonic male-female bestfriendship.

- I may reblog and add more later.

So this might be a disappointing response, but a lot of my personal philosophy on anarchy/direct action comes from my own lived experience, though I would say other people on Tumblr have been my #1 influence on developing and refining that. Ex: I didn't really consider the things I do a form of anarchy until I read someone's post on here about how the anarchists are the ones who help people in the immediate short-term while the politicians battle it out in Washington. The specific post I'm thinking of said something along the lines of that buying groceries for your neighbor living below the poverty line when their SNAP benefits/other programs aren't fully doing the job counts as anarchy because you're giving someone resources that society (by its design) didn't intend for that person to have, and that direct action is necessary because hungry people don't have time to wait for income limits for programs to be adjusted for inflation, legislation to pass, etc.

I would also say that I'm good at taking life lessons from weird places, so a lot of the authors/things I've read that have influenced my political/strategic thinking were writing about something else completely. The first thing that came to mind when you asked this was when I read Plastic Ocean for my environmental science in high school. Dude became like the leading researcher on the Pacific Ocean garbage patch with no formal scientific background. If I remember correctly, he was helping a kid with a science project on plastic on the beach, and then he just kind of spiralled into researching plastic pollution in the ocean, learned to write publishable scientific journal articles from reading print copies of other journals to get the format right, and actually snuck into a conference and just put up his research poster in an open space??? And that really hit me like "You can just teach yourself to do certain things, show up, and start talking about them???" Like yeah more likely than not, he was going to get kicked out of that conference, but that was literally the worst that could happen, and he didn't. My man took direct action on science and succeeded in turning the world's eyes to plastic pollution, and I think you'll notice that the idea of "Maybe it'll work, maybe it'll get ignored, but ______ is the worst that can happen, so why not try?" is very much integral to my thinking.

That environmental science class in itself did a lot for my understanding of activism. My evo teacher was a very educated and motivated woman, and she would let us direct the class topics for the day. One day we got on the topic of poaching, and she told us the real way to stop poaching is not to arrest and punish all the poachers, it's to address the systematic poverty in the regions where poaching is an issue because the people hunting down elephants against the law are doing it because they can get thousands of dollars for an elephant tusk, and that's enough to support their family for a year or more in an area with no living-wage work. That really got me thinking about how a lot of "bad people" are just desperate people, and I think you'll also notice that "Yeah yeah there's lots of things people should and shouldn't do, but morality isn't practicality, and desperate people do desperate things, so we need to eliminate the conditions that lead to people doing 'bad' things," is also central to my thinking about how to get things done.

The core of my ability to break down what the real problem is in different situations and figure out what action to take to get people's attention/cooperation actually comes from having a less than ideal childhood lol. My parents, who to their credit are much better now, were not super mature people when I was young, and they were both kind of volatile and unwillingly to do anything that mildly inconvenienced them, so I got really good at 1) reading subtle emotional cues (think "have you ever had someone angrily wash a dish at you?", 2) Understanding how to word things so that people will see the benefit and do what you're asking them to. Ex: I wanted to start a recycling program at my elementary school for my grade when I was 10 (very small rural school) by getting a tub for each classroom and collecting the paper on Fridays. My Mom said "No, I don't want trash in my house." My Dad saved metal and paper to take to the recycler to get money (not because he cared about the environment lol), so I went and told my Dad I could get him an entire grade's worth of paper to turn in with his, and suddenly we were at the grocery store getting a tub for each classroom, and I emptied them all into a bag on Fridays and presented it to my father to his great praise and my Mom's grumbling. The school created a recycling program to replace me after I moved on to middle school because they liked it. :)

Breaking down problems is something I started to learn to do in my early teenage years because it made it easier to legitimize my pushing back against things. You get a lot more credit when you can articulate what the problem is and why you are taking a specific action against it rather than personally attacking every shitty adult/convention you come into contact with. The kids who got into shouting matches with teachers or started screaming and yelling because they hit their breaking point were valid in their feelings, but because they were uncontrolled in their emotions and actions, they got no credit or legitimacy from administration. I realized that kids and teenagers don't really have much power, so I worked really hard to build myself a reputation and ethos of being reasonable but not willing to take shit from anyone because just enough measured action to attack the real problem + determination to cause small, irritating problems about it that they couldn't justify throwing me out for meant that the shortest path to the end of a conflict with me was actually sitting down, hearing my concerns, and coming to an agreement. It got me to a place of "We know she's not stupid, and we know she's not a push over, so since we can't manipulate her or stop her, I guess it's time to talk" with administration.

Yesterday evening, I attended my first Occupation as a part of my ISP with Occupy Orlando. Tracking their website, I specifically picked yesterday to go in order to attend their direct action working group meeting. 

In the Occupy movement, a working group is a part of the non-hierarchal organizational structure that aids in the planning and daily work of the movement and the movement's participants. As with throughout Occupy, working groups employ leaderless tactics of direct democracy for discussion that include a facilitator, which is someone who aids in maintaining the discussion on-topic and non-violent, and keeps a "stack," or a queue, of people who would like to speak on the topic. There are also other methods used during discussions, including a "direct response," where someone makes a motion to speak when they have something that deals directly with the last thing that has been said, a "verifying question," where someone directly asks something in order to make what was said more clear, and "point of process," where someone makes a motion to bring the conversation back on topic when the discussion seems to be going off course. Each of these tactics have hand movements that are done by the participants in order to gain attention without causing an interruption. When someone says something that people agree with or calls for a decision, people can wave their fingers in the air to silently show that they are in agreement, or cross their forearms in front of their chest as a "block," and then explain why they are in disagreement with the statement being said or the decision being made. After a block, discussion begins again, what is being decided upon may be altered, and consensus is attempted to be reached again. I was excited to see all of these tactics employed during the working group meeting, and they followed much of the same lines that Graeber described as "informal consensus meetings" in his chapter on Meetings, chapter 7, in Direct Action: An Ethnography.

Prior to the working group meeting, I was able to talk with some of the Occupiers who have been in strong participation with Occupy Orlando for many weeks or months. Occupy Orlando was kicked out of the park that they were occupying at the beginning of December, and since then, they have been maintaining their occupation outside of the Orlando City Hall building, where they stay early in the morning until late at night. This will hopefully soon change, however, as they are planning to re-occupy their original location as a part of the Occupy movement's "99th Day."

Being at the Direct Action meeting, I was also able to hear about what actions Occupy Orlando was planning on taking in the upcoming two weeks. Unfortunately, they made it clear that it was inappropriate to publicly state the specifics of what actions they would be taking. However, most of their plans involved "flyer bombing," where they would post flyers all over the city, the University of Central Florida, and in windows of cars that were around the city and in their home neighborhoods. The consensus came to these flyers being informational on what the Occupy movement is and why it is important, as well as one that is a fact sheet on why people need to get involved. They also discussed various marches to the Chamber of Commerce and to different offices of government officials, including the location that Obama would be coming to on the 19th of this month. They also discussed participating in Orlando's Martin Luther King Day parade, where they would be able to walk in the parade and hand out flyers to those who were in attendance. On the 16th, the Occupy movement is hosting a day called "Occupy the Fed," and the Orlando Occupy's Direct Action Working Group discussed non-violent tactics that they could take to "let them know that we were there."

The primary direct actions discussed at the Direct Action Working Group meeting surrounded flyer bombing and marching, as well as various specific dates of events that they were organizing, or governmental meetings that they would be attending or protesting outside of. Non-violent strategies were at the focus, and they repetitively discussed ways to make their mark on the city without actually causing any harm to anyone. 

Here's a screen shot of the livestream of the Direct Action Working Group meeting that I attended! I took the free wi-fi as a chance to snap this. :)

The day before I went to Orlando's Occupation, I had been reading about the "activist culture" in Graeber's Direct Action: An Ethnography, so I had this section in the forefront of my mind while I was observing Occupy Orlando's Direct Action Working Group meeting. What he said seemed very true - the majority of his discussion was on race, and how activists are generally middle-class whites. This appeared to be very true for the majority of the group - out of about 25 people, only 2 people appeared to be of another race. Furthermore, Graeber points out that most activists are post-college aged, which was primarily true, with the exception of approximately 5 individuals. There were also a lot of cigarette smokers in the group - when I arrived, about half of the people there were smoking.

Graeber mentions how such an "activist culture" can be a breaking point for the promise of a movement - it tends to make it "almost impossible for them to communicate with anyone outside of their little charmed circle" (page 239). While Graeber continues with a solid viewpoint that activist culture and demography can prohibit a movement because it seems to strengthen the very system of privilege that activists are trying to condemn, I don't think it's unfair to say that the Occupy movement in-particular is clearly open to everyone within the "99%" - encompassing nearly the entire population of the United States with it's message, and thus including all racial and nearly all class backgrounds. This entire section left me with the question that I will end my blog post on, with the intent to return to it in the future - perhaps when I have a better idea of an answer: If such a demography of primarily white, middle-class, young people are making up the bulk of a movement is causing a major rift in the effectiveness, however other people of other backgrounds are not necessarily stepping up to participate, how should such a group become successful?