i think the fact that some of these encampments are defending themselves from fascists escorted there by the state is a pretty important development. it shows some discipline and a higher level of organization than occupy, which at best managed to coordinate sanitation and food supply efforts. its also way better politically in the sense that there is an actual coordinated demand directed at a pretty important mechanism of the capitalist state. i think the state would have clearly preferred for the encampment problem to be resolved without its getting openly involved but in portlands case that didnt work. the problem of unclear leadership and lack of discipline at the political level is still pretty glaring though. and of course white chauvinism complicates everything as that text exchange shows.
i think there arent any groups actually ready to resist the cops or a determined nazi group, or the combination. of course these occupations could be armed but i don't know how that would end, probably badly. it seems like political unity and organization has to be built well before these encampments. people have to know and trust each other beforehand not just show up and have weird unaccountable organizational structures tossed together haphazardly. i dont have anything more interesting to say.
the fbi definitely knows all internal party details or could trivially obtain them, so what's actually being hidden?
But of course it’s kind of sad to see the anarcho/liberal not-a-leader-de-facto-leader thing is still such a headache even in places like Portland where the anarchists should be experienced enough to know better... and a communist doing some sort of ill-advised sketch comedy for commie organizers only might have a hard time coming up with “liberal organizes nightly vigils & then sells everyone out to the mayor” and “anarchist keeps everyone up late for big street fight that never happens”... too on the nose.
stegosaurus posted:ill also say that i still cant believe wwp monitors this thread for breaches of social media discipline, or that people stay in a party that disciplines people for discussing its problems openly (there weren't any names shared that i noticed, so whats the security justification?). seems like fairly basic accountability to The Ppl.
the fbi definitely knows all internal party details or could trivially obtain them, so what's actually being hidden?
without getting into the debate of how useful this sort of policy is for the organization’s members to manage themselves and issues within the organization, i’m not sure the above really follows. surveillance and infiltration by law enforcement is accepted by most organizations nowadays as either a possibility or a reality and it’s obvious the costs to the state at this point are trivial, but that doesn’t suggest to me that those groups in the receiving end should abandon policies to control to even a small degree the ways information gets out when that’s the degree to which they can control it. put it this way, the fact that a cop might show up to a meeting doesn’t mean you leave flyers at police stations about where and when it’s happening. let them do their own work.
i think the debate though is probably over whether the downsides to those policies outweigh their potential benefits (benefits that i think most of those policies’ supporters would agree are marginal even if they’re still worthwhile). this would be stuff like, are the policies impossible to follow as applied and thus arbitrarily & selectively used to punish people for other things? or, is keeping discussion internal an excuse used to cover up e.g. members abusing other members, as was apparently the case with some of the maoist groups in the OP?
when it comes to WWP, i don’t know enough to answer those questions (though i don’t think any social media policy is impossible to follow per se, so long as it accounts for the challenge of someone altering their past footprint when they don’t strictly control that data). but i don’t think a social media policy is bad security because surveillance happens in other ways, and i also don’t think that preventing surveillance is the only reason to get people joining a party to agree to limit their public statements about internal party business in certain cases.
as far as security goes, ultimately, i don’t think there’s any way any of these parties could or would enforce those policies beyond ejecting someone from the party, and that might suck, but in the U.S., it’s probably not going to get you shot by the cops the next day because no one has your back anymore or thrown out of a camp into paramilitary territory or anything. again though, the policy’s relative usefulness for members managing party business is another question to me, if a related one.
like in this case where apparently the PoC caucus was full of people not at the camp deciding how the camp will run, that's a flaw in the organizational structure where no one has actually decided what they want out of the camp, how decisions should actually happen, which topics should be open for debate and which should just be delegated to someone because they're matters of necessary maintenance. it also belies the perpetual flaw in the big tent occupation camp model where everyone wants to be involved, everyone wants it to be a shining example of their particular politics, no one wants to let go of their part in the Important Thing, but realistically people have complicated lives and they can't all be there. that's not PoC caucus problem, that's a structural flaw at the foundations of the action.
those kinds of problems don't happen at (for example) the road barricade camps organized by indigenous struggle groups, because there's an explicit understanding that the people who have the most at stake are the ones instigating and in charge and if you're showing up to help it's to help by taking direction from them, they're experienced and organized and know exactly what they plan to do. for a large enough action there will be various caucuses for marginalized peoples present, with clearly delineated roles in the decision making structure and a positive relationship with the health of the camp, and it's all fine.
i’m not a huge fan of the term, but ICE camps are a type of deterritorialization that’s been weaponized, and ICE presence is akin to military deployment in a heavily controlled domestic setting. that’s no excuse for not building movements based in and under the control of the communities in which they operate, but it can make it substantially easier for e.g. state efforts to insert or coopt organizational leadership that purports to represent that community.
mayakovfefe posted:from the perspective of a border town, the occupy ice protests really deradicalized and took the wind out of the narrative. most coverage previously was about seperations that border patrol did either in the sonoran desert or at points of entry. while the migrants were held in ice facilities, the story was imo mostly about the military occupation of the chicano nation. by focusing on ice facilities in the interior the story lost that perspective with people like dsa favorite ocasio-cortez saying it's okay to abolish ice because the border will still be militarized. something we should expect from a movement that's new york flavor was promoted b y nazi enthusiast molly crabapple. it's sad that even the bland deradicalized version was changed into something completely useless as government backed vigils
yeah exactly. when you lift resistance up and away into places where hobbyist-activists prefer to ply their trade, you are following ICE’s strategy because those are precisely the places where the state has a bigger and deeper base than any possible resistance, places where the struggle is “not normal” in the eyes of many people trying to get involved. it’s why ICE established its facilities there in the first place and it’s also the result of the presence they already have.
stegosaurus posted:ill also say that i still cant believe wwp monitors this thread for breaches of social media discipline, or that people stay in a party that disciplines people for discussing its problems openly (there weren't any names shared that i noticed, so whats the security justification?). seems like fairly basic accountability to The Ppl.
the fbi definitely knows all internal party details or could trivially obtain them, so what's actually being hidden?
having made this point several times, face-to-face, with PSL organizers, at every juncture over the last year and a half in which the party encountered any kind of opposition or critical scrutiny, i can say that it's basically like they don't care about being accountable to the people. they're only accountable to themselves and the left organizations they work with (but even that's tenuous).
the WWP has the same kind of cloistered mentality when it comes to criticism, and it's backed up by a political line that relegates criticism of the party to only its members, informally, and criticism of the party's leadership to a bureaucratic system of formal complaints.
essentially this means there's no actual ideological struggle within the big parties and the big parties separate themselves from any sort of accountability to the people whose interests, in theory, they represent and advance.
security culture is a pretty standard excuse for dismissing and denouncing any real political challenge or valid criticism. but the fact is the parties are too slow, too indisciplined, and, weirdly, too confident to deal with actual security issues. my comrade and i still get PSL internal comms despite leaving the party months ago. back when i joined, iirc, internal comms were still being run through a fucking yahoo server. every time i'm around their organizers, they get wasted and just ramble on about internal party drama. a couple months ago, a candidate member informed me about a couple new internal directives and how party leadership intended to enforce them. that was a month before the party actually took any action.
security isn't a sufficient reason for the unaccountability or the evasiveness because it barely even exists.
Edited by red_dread ()
red_dread posted:my comrade and i still get PSL internal comms despite leaving the party months ago. back when i joined, iirc, internal comms were still being run through a fucking yahoo server. every time i'm around their organizers, they get wasted and just ramble on about internal party drama. a couple months ago, a candidate member informed me about a couple new internal directives and how party leadership intended to enforce them. that was a month before the party actually took any action.
lmao, feeling all this so hard. it was a fucking trip for me disengaging from official roles to get out of the gossip loop only to find that i was still in it, like it or not, because every time i saw anyone they enthusiastically dragged me in regardless of supposed security practices. just imagine how easy it must be for any state intelligence, just show up and be friendly and the poor shell shocked bastards will be begging to tell you everything. (except they're military and cops so something as trivial as basic friendly human empathy is extraordinarily difficult for them, small mercies)
Edited by JohnBeige ()
mayakovfefe posted:i dont understand why these sorts of organizations act they they take security seriously when they dont even mandate sobriety. how secure can your organization be if their members regularly and willingly lose control of their actions; build dependencies on very harmful drugs. how drug use hurt the black panthers and other communist organizations in the 60's 70's is well documented and the bolsheviks and ccp both pushed sobriety in their ranks. idk seems like a pretty basic thing to do if you want to overthrow the amerikan government
thats ok, i didnt want to join your club anyway
edit: obviously i mean that you should deal with cases of alcohol and drug use on a case by case basis amoung your little group, and maybe be open about them up front, like theeres an idea, if people jioning up together to do marxism weere like honest with each other up front instead of pretending they're the next lenin or whatever
Edited by tears ()
mayakovfefe posted:the threat of a spanking to make people do thing
are you going to spank them?
tears posted:its bad op but i think "forbidding alcohol" is entirly impractical
once again islamic socialism compares favorably to alternatives
2. Any part member found shooting narcotics will be expelled from this party.
3. No party member can be drunk while doing daily party work.
7. No party member can have a weapon in his possession while drunk or loaded off narcotics or weed.
e
my favorite is 5. No party member will use, point, or fire a weapon of any kind unnecessarily or accidentally at anyone.
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shriekingviolet posted:good lord I'm supposed to be as DYTD as you can get and even I think drinking in meetings is shameful. glorified social club bullshit.
I hung out with the dying Communist Party of Britain a little over the past year (largely because they had a cool bookstore with tons of great old books). And yeah, all they did was drink together in their office space. I didn't join but I knew everything going on in the party. Obviously it's shitty and self-inflating to say it, and I know I'm not any better, but I hate how fundamentally non-serious so many communists are.
getfiscal posted:the shocking thing to me though is how quickly those lessons can disappear as power shifts.
it's really cool to spend years building up something that you think will finally pull an org out of a rut only to see it all dissolve in a couple months when your focus shifts elsewhere. builds character.
criticisms were shot down regardless of their political substance, serious discussions transformed into playful shouting matches, and their disdain for political difference was directed almost exclusively at women. all the "old oppressor values," the openness about inter-party strife (which became much more of a thing later on), and the drinking were closely intertwined. inevitably, if that shit goes unchecked, that'll either cause an org to stagnate completely or provoke a severe rupture like what's going on in the WWP.
smoke breaks are fine tho
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