More than forty Occupy NOLA folks, friends, and others attracted to the dialogue poured into the Fair Grinds Common Space for the meeting. A good cup of coffee and a warm scone or coffee was a long way from the damp, chill of the Plaza campsites. Theoretically it should have been a welcome change to actually hear one another as well, but listening to the meeting that might have not been an advantage in some ways, because what might often seem a difficult consensus process in the best of times was easily contentious. For the exact reasons part of the ACORN culture had always been to ban Robert’s Rules of Order to prevent empowering an elite that could weaponize the procedural tools to control a meeting, the Occupy NOLA discussions were caught in the tensions between “facilitators” whose expertise was reportedly the “consensus” procedures, but who kept sparring back and forth for command of the crowd and the agenda. Those parts of the meeting weren’t pretty to watch, but for the most part the Occupy veterans would argue that was either part and parcel of the process or simply the way sausage needs to be made, despite the frustrations voiced repeatedly in the debates and later in the “soapbox.”

At the same time there were parts of the meeting that were surprisingly robust. A hearty delegation from Baton Rouge visited and reported on their progress, which might not have involved an encampment but did involve a written list of demands, making them unique in that respect, as well as what sounded a lot like a legislative agenda. They also brought news of other Occupy groups in Lafayette and around Louisiana, which was also fascinating. One of the OccupyBR folks whispered to me at the back of the room that “they didn’t work like this,” which I assume means that the process involves a learning curve that’s pretty steep.

The most exciting local report involved Occupy Lots. More explanation and reports indicated that there were somewhere near 20 folks many from other Occupy uprooted encampments around the country that were camping on a vacant lot next to a homeowner in the 7th ward and helping her make improvements on the property. News cameras were there earlier in the day. Other reports focused on reasserting their role in the community with something around Martin Luther King Day and other events.

Nonetheless, listening closely to the whole meeting, it was hard to escape the conclusion that as committed as many were, they were groping for a plan for the future. There was no consensus on that question, and really very little debate or discussion. Several people raised the issue during the “soapbox” session, which allows open mic griping that everyone can easily ignore. In fact most people left the room during that section to visit elsewhere in the coffeehouse.

As an organizer, I would venture to predict that there is a hard debate coming between occupants committed to a program and plan going forward and occupants committed to the process and trusting that something will emerge. Logically one would think that this sort of thing simply works itself out, but after listening to a 45 minute debate of sorts as they struggled to decide where to meet again twixt and tween the Plaza and our Fair Grinds Common Space, I wondered if that was possible or the group would simply split into various Occupy this and that’s without being able to sustain the Occupy core.

One advantage of dialogues that is past argument, is that when they work as well as this one, it gets you thinking!

New Orleans              

We went by the General Assembly to hear the news Tuesday night.  The 40 or so folks left were sitting or lying on a small mound of grass in the Plaza listening to the legal team report on the judge’s decision, which, predictably, was grim and go.  In a short order Judge Lance Africk simply wrote with no elaboration that “…the Court finds that plaintiffs have not carried their burden of establishing a substantial likelihood of success on the merits….”  Mark Gonzales, one of the volunteer lawyers, told them plainly that more detail from the Judge was not going to provide better news.

There was concern about goods and property lost by the police’s illegal eviction and whether there would be any compensation.

There were offers of new locations.  Empty lots in the lower 9^th ward, still devastated and 80% vacant since Katrina, was one suggestion.  Another speaker suggested an Episcopal Church that seemed to be closing on Canal Street.  People drifted around the meeting.  Others listened carefully.  There was calm.  Two people had decided to be arrested at 10 PM when the police were scheduled.  Some would watch from across the street and down the block as witnesses.

This was dénouement.   Ground conceded.  Point long made.  Future uncertain.

New Orleans              

A friend sent me their way to have a look with the warning that this could be a real deal or something sketchier.  My buddy, the outlier from a long line of generals in the army going back to the Battle of the Big Horn, and myself a veteran of many family gatherings and Thanksgivings where GS rankings and military slang from decades of service were an important foreign language to acquire, both thought the Occupy Marines site seemed to be authentic, especially when we took the long tour through a 20-minute YouTube interview with a Dutch reporter on the website.  The action-plan, tactical drawings looked military all the way.

In the leaderless, consensus system that so clearly characterizes Occupy around the world, the Occupy Marines contribution is an anomaly and a bit of a contradiction, since they avowedly offer to make their work in the movement based on their military training in logistics, supply, support, and “leadership.”  For example one offering from them focused on winter camping and how to manage it, which might have been helpful to some of the longer rooted Occupy sites.

The Occupy Marines website seems to be under attack or some tension currently.  Hitting a link brings up a warning about “unauthenticated certificates,” which may mean that there is trouble in Occupy uniform?  There has been discussion from Occupy Marine about migrating to OMC to assuage the concerns of some of the more conservative leathernecks out there and about.  Their Facebook site has 18,000 fans and is one of the more serious of such sites, and perhaps the easiest way to follow what they are up to.

If something like this starts to grow, it creates not only capacity for the overall movement, but a series of new “fronts” in pushing for deeper and deeper social changes in hard to reach places and spaces.  At the point Occupy is encamped firmly in everyone’s mind, victory is assured, and the rest is tactics and timing.

            New Orleans              

Dharmendra Kumar, campaign director of India FDI Watch (www.indiafdiwatch.org), issued a detailed, factual rebuttal to the government’s claims, which clarifies the issues:

The Issue of FDI in Retail

            New Orleans              

Having been in Cairo several months ago with the delegation from the Organizers’ Forum (www.organizersforum.org), it was impossible not to feel while we were there and in the weeks that followed the profound disappointment of so many of the activists and the increasing likelihood that the revolution’s aims might be lost even though changes would be felt for the future.  The message to the military when we were there was inchoate and spoke more to the divisiveness of the protesters in the emerging politics, than to folks with their “eyes on the grape,” as we used to say.

The push that finally began days ago in Cairo, as doubts continued to increase that the military was angling for a permanent role in running the country and being dilatory in the discussions of any real transfer of power to parliamentary and democratic rule, was led by the much maligned Muslim Brotherhood.  Organizational discipline once again trumped social networking and political jockeying for power.  The Brotherhood poured tens of thousands into the square and their commitment and discipline was deep enough to withstand the military attack and hold Tahrir Square, bringing tens of other thousands to fill the space in escalating protest and resistance.

It is now the military that is forced to blink and retreat.  With the announcement that the civilian puppet cabinet as offered to resign the military reads the writing on the wall:  they either compromise or stand the chance of being institutionally crippled in the future.  Heads will roll!  One protester quoted in the Times pointed out the final realization of the irony that the military was thanked last January for not shooting the protesters as being the same as “thanking your wife for not sleeping with other men.”  Correctly, one should have the right of a citizen to not expect your nation’s  military to shoot you.  The military seems to have forgotten this as well in these strange times.

David Kirkpatrick of the Times, who has been an  excellent source on some much of this, paints the Brotherhood  as “reeling from the swift collapse of the military’s authority” in fear of there being a delay in the elections.  This is a tactical hiccup in the face of a potential victory.  There seems little doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been immeasurably strengthened in recent days.  In fact it seems clear if the revolution in fact is finally won that the protesters of all stripes will owe a huge debt of gratitude and grudging respect.

We found a consensus that in elections the Muslim Brotherhood would be big winners, but a realpolitick assessment that they were too smart not to understand the lessons of the revolution and the lack of interest of the Egyptian people in suddenly living in a rigid theocracy.  The Brotherhood is now incurring huge debts for saving the revolution, but hopefully they will not make the mistake the military made in January of ignoring how important the revolution is to all of the Egyptian people.

The bystanders who could only comment that, “They’re children,” brings a chilling comment to the forefront of these movement, when even passive non-violence provokes repression.  Where do we live, Tahrir Square?   Is this the only invitation to dialogue that the 1% offers to the 99%?

Those forces need to beware.  It could be reactions like these from police forces in service to god knows whom, that deepen the support for this movement more broadly across America.  Even when we are not in agreement, we tend to support the ability to ask questions in peace and in public.

New Orleans

Summarizing the polling results, here are some of the bullet points worth remembering:

• 75% think “economic structure is out of balance and the power of banks and corporations should be reduced.” 60% strong agree!

• 38% believe in that both banks, corporations and government need to be cut back

• There’s no universal “love” for either of these tenuous movements with 35% feeling negative on Occupy and 44% finding Tea distasteful.

• Strongest support for Occupy Wall Street “isn’t those under 35, but rather those 50 to 64” – a Sixties Slapback!

• “Support is highest not among those who make under $30,000 a year, but rather among those who make $50,000 to $70,000….27% of those who make more than $75,000 a year count themselves as backers.”

• More people are Occupy Wall Street fans in the West than in the Northeast.

• More people are Occupy Wall Street fans among professions and managers than among blue-collar workers.

• Similar to the Tea Party the support is strongest for Occupy Wall Street among men, not women, and particularly men over 50 years of age.

In the words of the Dylan song, “There’s something happening, Mr. Jones, and you don’t know what it is.” But, clearly it’s not simple or shallow. It’s deep, dynamic, and dangerous. Better get with it!

A particular space doesn’t matter, this park or that park, so in that sense a tactical retreat from any particular piece of ground is meaningless.  Some of the Occupy forces have understood that and have attempted to decamp to universities, church grounds, and friendly turf for this new Woodstock Nation.  That’s smart!

But to think that any notion of the Occupy movement can survive without some kind of space to project their protest and create the symbol and rallying point for their causes is totally wrong and the worse kind of trap.  In Prague I recently city officials there wisely allow a permanent shelter for petitioning, information, and communication around reform efforts in several places in the city.  In Tegucigalpa the city officials allowed a half dozen tents to be allowed in the middle of the plaza in front of City Hall for long term protestors and hunger strikers among teachers.  Same for Mexico City along La Reforma Avenida and other planton locations.

These kinds of protests have to have a place.  Their constituency is mobile and disparate, even if potentially large (99%?!?), but without a space it is too diffuse to hold together, especially given the amorphous, unstructured kind of organizational formation that they are using at this time.

Other Occupy sites are now imperiled because following the American prototype there will be efforts throughout the world to quickly dismantle and prove your mayoralty spurs.  Organizers would be tactically shrewd to move first before the finest and to move now to maintain the momentum and the flexibility necessary to keep the movement alive.

New Orleans

The next half-hour of messing with this was interesting.  First, there were not a huge number of callers, which at least proves that some Fox News viewers have some good sense or a modicum of manners.  Secondly, most callers hung up as soon as I picked up the phone on the old principle I suppose that if a man answers, hang up!  I think they were taken aback to have gotten lucky and had me on the phone.  One engaged me a bit and wanted to make sure I was “Wade S. Rathke, the ACORN thug who was organizing the Occupy movement.”  I told him my middle name was Wade and that he had his “S” was in the wrong place, and I hung up.  The calls were from Allentown, PA, and central Jersey, and that neck of the woods.  Fox News and these losers probably don’t realize that you can immediately dial back after a call and get the number of the caller on modern phones, so we could collect their numbers to turn into the police.

It was funny to me that they used the Fair Grinds number, rather than calling my office at ACORN International or Local 100 United Labor Unions or Social Policy magazine, all of which would have normally given them a better shot at talking to me.  Do the Fox News crazies not only think – preposterously – that I’m somehow “organizing the Occupy movement,” but also working as a barista at our great new Fair Grinds Coffeehouse?  Even funnier is that we are still in the death throes of trying to get Cox and Verizon to port the cellphone numbers that were used since Katrina at the coffeehouse over to a land line we installed two weeks ago, so bully-boy callers would have gone right to voice mail over there.

Frankly, it’s not cool to see that Fox News is back up to these kinds of shenanigans even with Glenn Beck long lost and gone.  This is the kind of thing that brings out the whack jobs as we all saw in the Oakland incident and gunfight about a year ago with a deranged dude looking to wreck mayhem on the Tides Foundation because of its connections with me, progressives, and others.   On Facebook a number of my friends’ advice was to lawyer up, but as much as I appreciated the sentiment, we have freedom of speech here, and once you have morphed into being a “public figure” because of the work you do, there’s not much that lawyers can do but send you a bill.  As for calling the police in New Orleans, read the papers, Google New Orleans police, and you will understand why I would feel safer NOT calling, thank you!  I’m glad I got a shotgun for my birthday and am in the process of getting myself a new dog for the yard since Cheyenne passed away, but these things only mark the boundary line of the property.

The real boundaries have to be marked by a civility of discourse and dissent, which allows us to vigorously debate our differences including organizing aggressively and protesting loudly, but still respects basic democratic principles and fundamental societal norms that do not deliberately attempt to silence and intimidate.  It won’t work with me, but, frankly, it should be tried with anyone.