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Graham (baba gbb)'s avatar

There’s such a disconnect from basic physical reality and group goals with the decision to have no demands because of a desire to “replace the system.” These conversations happened in NYC. That is a place that is like the heart of the beast’s “system.” There’s no “replacing the system” in any place on earth that’s a big city like NYC unless you’re ready to murder or displace millions of people who live and work there and are completely tied into and dependent on “the system.” So this whole premise was nonsense - worse than tooth fairy level - because nobody involved was willing to engage in any kind of monstrous actions to actually advance toward really “replacing the existing system in NYC.” The rest was just a circle jerk. I said so at the time. It’s one of the reasons I did not participate in any way. (My wife made lots of amazing signs and poo-poo’d my poo-poo’ing.) I was also living w and taking care of my dying grandma (in Philly - she died Oct 2011) so like really REAL shit versus yahoos in the street talking nonsense. If they wanted to change NYC or NY or the USA (not replace it but change it), then they needed to figure out how to take over those existing entities. None of these people had the least bit of interest in actually making a serious attempt at that either (local precinct by precinct, door to door organizing, going into every neighborhood and talking w all the people who live and work there, some of whom will make you very uncomfortable). If they wanted to make a new system, they needed to go somewhere quiet and small and rural where they wouldn’t have to kill or displace anyone and then get down to the hard physical labor on the land and in community w other like minded people to build something new. Graeber was not helpful in any of this. Nobody was. Anybody who might have been actually helpful got turned off or run off early on. And that was that. If it’s a delusional dysfunctional group of people, don’t matter what the activity or effort is, it ain’t gonna work. For context, I’m not just a critic. I spent a few decades doing community and political organizing and advocacy at every level and in multiple places around the country. So I tried every route or approach that way and have determined that: it’s over. Done. We lost the system. It’s gone. At the national and state levels and at the local level in most places too. It’s unraveling and collapsing because the only people left in it are criminals or grifters or show-offs or morons (usually all the above). Occupy was a fever dream.

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Graham (baba gbb)'s avatar

It’s not amorphous or imaginary; the future is happening now.

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