-the positions that are established by General Assemblies,
-the connections to the community.
I raise this question knowing that one of the best ways to get new participants in the occupy movement is to be assaulted by violent police.
Still, it seems that the heads of cities across the US-- mayors, city managers, city councils, police chiefs-- are using strategies to freeze out the northern occupied territories and arrest and remove people from the southern, warmer occupied territories.
What's the alternative to fetishizing locale? Some cold weather occupied territories are already doing it-- finding indoor places to stay-- warehouses, large, un-used indoor facilities, churches.
I don't have all the answers, just the question. But perhaps the thing to do is to find sleeping quarters , at least for the winter, and to shift strategy to a total free-speech oriented occupation of public places-- which will be harder for police and municipal leaders to defend tearing down.
Perhaps the de-fetishizing of occupy locales is a bad idea. But perhaps, by de-fetishing the physical locales and instead focusing on all the other actions, characteristics and strengths of the embryonic Occupy Wall Street movement the movement can be liberated to an even more powerful range of options on how to operate.
Another way to think about it is that if the physical locale is de-fetishized, then, when police clear or harass an area, occupiers can brush it off-- use the harassment for media exposure first, then move somewhere else and step up the really important actions, discussions and community building-- a kind of Jiu Jitsu that makes the movement stronger when it is attacked.
Occupy DC Currently Occupies McPherson Square-- Fronting on K Street It's a beautiful local, with soft grass ground for occupiers to sleep on and just a few blocks from the White House.
Occupy Washington DC, at Liberty Plaza: Tahrir Square in, English, translates for Freedom or Liberty Square. So the locale is symbolic and also very close to the White House, across the street from the Commerce Building and just a few blocks from the US Chamber of Commerce-- a defender of big corporations and an almost daily target of Occupier protesters.
How would a non-locale Occupy Wall Street look?
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