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August 17, 2015

#BlackLivesMatter and #Occupy

Friend Perry last week wrote just the post that had been inchoately floating around in my mind.

Blac Lives Matter definitely has some parallels to the Occupy movement, above all, theoretically, lack of organization. (That said, Occupy had an organizational structure, and certainly had leadership, at least at Zucotti Park; any time you have an inner circle with security protection, they're leaders.)

The main problem is with lack of organization, in the case of BLM, or organizational control, as with Occupy, is that you get disruptors. Besides a kid pulling a gun in Ferguson, you get a deliberate disruptor who wants to sow mayhem inside the Democratic Party (and apparently has not heard of Greens, or more likely, doesn't care).  And, per this additional bit, even more than with Occupy, folks like Johnson run the risk of disrupting Black Lives Matter.

The bigger problem, right now, is that organizers of local political events aren't taking enough control of events. Next time, cut off the mike of Marissa Johnson or her like after the alloted time she's given. The time after that, boot her.

Period.

(Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has rightfully said he has no need to apologize to BLM activists and that a staffer shouldn't have sent out an apology email. But he IS meeting with one activist, and let's hope they listen, and if there's things Sanders needs to address, not just hear, he does so. And, arguably, there's strategery in a focus on Sanders, though I would debate that, too. This is all as Hillary gets a private meeting with other Black Lives Matters leaders. If that's strategery, I've got beachfront in Nevada to sell you.)

Per that third link, and Johnson's schwaffling on why she's only protested Bernie Sanders? Grow some ovaries and protest Hillary Clinton, too. Until you do, shut up about your claims to be disrupting the Democratic Party. They're lies.

This gets back to event organizers. It's unfair that Sanders, O'Malley and others get interrupted at events that Clinton isn't even at. And, to the degree BLM does have organization, it's unfair that you don't do something about this.

That said, there are differences between the two movements, mainly on the movements themselves. The original Zucotti Park Occupy movement, per its own self-surveying, was white kids with MBAs or JDs and upper-middle-class parents. And, it was peddling big myth in this way, about "poor us" as well as "leaderlessness." BLM, on the other hand, is probably more inchoate, and didn't have the likes of an Adbusters calling for it to be formed. (Indeed, a lot of people formally or informally associated with BLM would laugh like hell at Adbusters.)

That said, if BLM has other Johnsons, trolls or even false flaggers could be it's own Achilles. (And, in places like Oakland, who's to say that Occupy didn't have false flaggers?)

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