http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111681642279467.html...they've just raided Zuccotti Park ... Cops have already dismantled the encampment at OWS," he explained, before moving on to contact anyone he could reach who might have first-hand information about what was going on there.
My first thought was immediately the 5,000 book library that has come to define the OWS site at Zuccotti Park. Tents can be replaced, even most personal effects. But destroying books is like destroying the soul of the movement; for more than any protest movement in at least two generations, the OWS movement is the product of well-planned, thoughtful action guided by a constant engagement with theory.
As Minsky explained to me when we spoke early the next morning, compared with the anti-corporate globalisation and then anti-war movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the libraries reflect the "maturity of a movement" that had "been shell-shocked by the whole Bush era".
Not just theory, also facts.
As soon as he heard about the library, his thoughts turned to Heinrich Heine, the great 19th century German poet and critic, who exclaimed in his Almansor the famous words: "Where they burn books, they'll ultimately burn people too".
Of course, New York City isn't burning books, but for Aloni, carting them away in garbage trucks is not that far removed. "When they disrespect books, they disrespect humankind, and when they destroy books, they destroy the spirit of humanity. The library was great because people gave more than they took. OWS was not just a place for activism, but also a place for education and rethinking; not for just blathering on when you don't know, but being humble and willing to learn. By taking out the library, they've tried to stop that crucial process."
It was eerie when Bloomberg said we would now have to occupy the space with the power of our arguments. He said this because he knows the system is set up to warp, spin, and contain the power of arguments.
Seizing and holding territory is key
The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt only became possible once activist groups got moved from Facebook to the streets, adapting with incredible speed and alacrity to the various attempts by the governments to slow them down. So it's not surprising that Egyptian revolutionaries like Asmaa Mahfouz and Ahmed Maher feel so at home when visiting OWS.
Even if the thousands of books carted away by sanitation workers are ultimately recovered by their owners or the People's Librarians or replaced, without a highly visible public space where they can be accessed any time, members of the movement and the less powerful public they will lose much if not most of the animating power they gave to the OWS movement.
It turns out that in the 21st century, seizing and holding territory - both the public square and the public sphere - are inextricably bound together. As Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street continue their battle for the soul of American society into the winter and then an election year, the flood of knowledge represented by the OWS People's Library is one of the best weapons protesters have to hold their ground against their much better financed, and armed, adversaries. If municipalities and their corporate sponsors are able to push OWS out of public sight, it will be a lot harder to ensure it doesn't fall out of mind for the millions of Americans who have just begun to feel safe imagining that through direct action, they too can change a system that has never seemed more stacked against them.
They're trying to move the revolution from the streets back to facebook. We have powerful communication tools in the internet, but we cannot let that make us complacent. I think it was on Countdown tonight that I saw an evicted occupier say that we still have facebook. That made me nervous.
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