HeavenlyPossumDec 7, 2022

“The police, then, are essentially just bureaucrats with weapons. Their main role in society is to bring the threat of physical force—even, death—into situations where it would never have been otherwise invoked…In a very real sense, the ‘middle class’ is not an economic category, it's a social one. To be middle class is to feel that the fundamental institutional structures of society are, or should be, on your side. If you see a policeman and you feel more safe, rather than less, then you can be pretty sure you're middle class. Yet for the first time since polling began, most Americans in 2012 indicated they do not, in fact, consider themselves middle class.”

David Graeber

https://www.gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-american-life-1692392051

#PossumQuotes

Ferguson and the Criminalization of American Life

The Department of Justice's investigation of the Ferguson Police Department has scandalized the nation, and justly so. But the department's institutional racism, while shocking, isn't the report's most striking revelation.

Gawker
Show threadTweetingTechnoDec 9, 2022
@HeavenlyPossum Graeber was wonderful, and a very sad loss.
He was also, of course, correct in his views of the police.
Show threadCurrentBiasDec 9, 2022
@tweetingtechno @HeavenlyPossum didn't he help drown out the faction of occupy that wanted to make actual demands of the government
Show threadCurrentBias
@tweetingtechno @HeavenlyPossum https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2020-09-16/david-graebers-anarchism-and-occupy-movement
David Graeber's anarchism and the Occupy movement

The news that David Graeber had died so young, at only 59, was shocking and saddening. He had one of those inherently lively, energetic personalities that seems to contradict the concept of death itself. He earned respect as one of the few modern anarchist thinkers who tried to really apply anarchism systematically as a total worldview: anarchist principles informed his anthropological and historical research, his economics, and his interventions into real world politics.

Workers' Liberty
Dec 9, 2022 at 7:13pmWeb
Show threadHeavenlyPossumDec 9, 2022

@tweetingtechno @currentbias

I sincerely doubt he’d put it in terms of “drowning anyone out.” Wasn’t the whole point persuasion, consensus, flexibility, and spontaneity?

Show threadCurrentBiasDec 9, 2022
@HeavenlyPossum @tweetingtechno I would say volume-blasting disagreements with megaphones is a tense way to persuade
Show threadHeavenlyPossumDec 9, 2022

@tweetingtechno @currentbias

Did he use a megaphone? I thought they used the “people’s megaphone” or whatever they called it where people would repeat a speaker’s words so everyone could hear

Show threadHeavenlyPossumDec 9, 2022

@currentbias @tweetingtechno

Also…why would demands have made a difference?

Show threadCurrentBiasDec 9, 2022

@HeavenlyPossum @tweetingtechno disclaimer that I wasn't there and cannot confirm this, but I heard the people's megaphone did not always go well, and the camp that wanted to make demands was isolated for being perceived as dangerous to what occupy was about

However, without demands, it's hard to say what occupy *was* about, other than raising awareness about the severity of inequality. I think demands give the movement something concrete to stand on

Show threadHeavenlyPossumDec 9, 2022

@currentbias @tweetingtechno

so Graeber helped persuade people, without a megaphone?

Show threadCurrentBiasDec 9, 2022
@HeavenlyPossum @tweetingtechno as the article above notes, "totally autonomous affinity groups" were used when consensus could not be reached, which is one way of saying that factions formed that competed with each other for the identity of the movement -- and according to some (as the article does not note), this at one point took the form of shouting over each other
Show threadCurrentBiasDec 9, 2022
@HeavenlyPossum @tweetingtechno but it wasn't right of me to imply that david was part of that without actually knowing for sure, cause it's not like we have clips of him shouting over anyone with a megaphone and it would contradict his written principles