Lessons Learned / Not Learned from the 9/24 Walkout

“In the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect”
—Mao Tse-Tung

We should have occupied Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley instead of being broken into impotent committees. (“UC ‘Student Leaders’ Sabotage Occupation of Wheeler Hall” http://indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/25/18623229.php”)

We should have continued up the stairs at Mrak Hall instead of depleting our energies marching to Katehi’s house. And on November 19, hundreds returned and occupied Mrak Hall, resulting in 52 arrests.

A mass is continually composing and recomposing itself. It takes an instant for a mass to turn revolutionary. Every mass is potentially revolutionary, and every mass contains reactionary elements.

We all contain those elements. They are the mesmerizing voice of false consciousness, that the interests of rulers are the same as our interests, embodied in us in its current form due to being born in a time ruled by the logic of capital, being inundated by this logic through all channels, and which is not a logic in the interest of people. A ≠ not A.

The defeat of these reactionary elements requires the defeat of them first in ourselves, then confronting it when being manifested by others. That seductive voice must be exposed in its meaningless stupidity; as Lacan put it, we must “change the precious gift into a piece of shit.”

"Another reflex is to call a general assembly at the slightest sign of movement, and vote. This is a mistake. The business of voting and deciding a winner is enough to turn the assembly into a nightmare, into a theater where all the various little pretenders to power confront each other. Here we suffer from the bad example of bourgeois parliaments. An assembly is not a place for decisions but for talk, for free speech exercised without a goal."

One only has freedom of speech if one actually speaks, if one acts. Freedom of speech as freedom not to speak is to refuse to speak in respect for the institution for its own sake. No more respecting institutions for their own sake. Start thinking, start speaking, start acting.

When the flows mimicking institutional power, reactionary flows, form, disrupt them. “Take advantage of every crisis.”