Just asking ... this summer was supposed to be a big summer for OWS. Is that totally gone now? n/t

[coalition_unwilling]

253. Another truly awesome post and one I hope all of DU gets a chance to read. I remember

thinking in those first two weeks of October that it was if the spirit of 1848 had swept across the land, a spirit of revolutionary fervor that took on different guises depending on where it manifested.

By Week 6, though, I witnessed one of the Occupy Los Angeles General Assemblies descend into what I can only call pure 'mob rule' as various attendees 'rushed the stack,' placing facilitators (myself included) and speakers in serious jeopardy of life and limb. No one was hurt, fortunately, but the descent into Bedlam was quite sobering. I must be too much the logocentric authoritarian because, when I protested these gross violations of what I will call 'parliamentary procedure' by all these would-be tinpot dictators, I was told it was simply the process 'working itself out.' This shit reached the ludicrous dimension that, in mid-November, as Facilitation concluded and the GA was to begin, the drum circle continued to drum away madly, as though drumming somehow would help put toilet paper in the porta potties or present any kind of unified and solid resistance to the municipal powers who were starting to exhibit overt hositility to OLA. Oh, those drummers in the drum circle had just as much right to drum as anyone had to have a GA, the principal legislative vehicle by which OLA administered itself. I so wanted OLA to succeed that I swallowed my misgivings to an extent. If you had seen these latter-day Dionysians drumming away in a fit of percussive ecstasy, as though through percussion they would vanquish not only their own inner demons but also those of OLA in general, you begin to see the absurdity to which OLA could all too often descend. OLA became the perfect apotheosis of what Tom Wolfe had earlier called the "Me Generation."

For what it's worth, I never could get anyone at Occupy Los Angeles to commit to the idea of 'one man, one vote' (a concept I hold near and dear). Many of them had difficulty it seemed understanding what the concept even meant. Most OLAs condemned voting as itself some sort of sell-out. But after everyone got through condemning the current political status quo for its obvious inequities, no one would discuss a mechanism by which power should be distributed in society. Was it to be 100% consensus as practiced at the OLA GA, where one person could hard-block the GA into perfect stasis, making the Republican filibusters look like amateur hour? Was it to be some Leninist vanguard directing the proletariat (my preference)? No one could or would say. Everyone wanted to bitch about the status quo, but few were willing to walk precincts or do any of the grunt-level stuff that makes politics work and revolutions succeed.

And yet. And yet . . . despite these paroxysms of utter self indulgence to which my wife and I were all too often witness, in that square block of Los Angeles real estate, more honest political discourse was taking place every 24 hours than took place in the entire national political venues in a month. It is this spirit of earnest honesty, of tireless striving, that I shall always remember and treasure.