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About Welcome to the New Paradigm or The Crisis of Everything Everywhere is the name for a small scale / molecular / modular / horizontally organized effort to think, speak about, and speculate upon our present.



It will unfold over a period of 9 days, between January 7th and 15th. It will involve various groups and individuals who have explored or been directly involved in the movement of the squares, encampments and occupations of 2011.



It will involve artists, thinkers, writers, activists, occupiers, poets, programmers, workers, revolutionaries, students, debtors, laborers and laborless of all kinds into a focused yet open-ended conversation, collective research and analysis of our contemporary social-political movements / struggles.



Given the fact we are in New York, we will make a special effort to address and consider how those movements have impacted the political and cultural landscape of this city, region and country. And by connecting to other histories and places, to begin to build up an image of what kinds of struggles and challenges may lay ahead in the coming weeks, months, even years.

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Background & Overview On the first day, we will attempt to situate ourselves collectively into the context we find ourselves in both globally and historically.



We will attempt with the help of Marianne and Brandon to introduce some questions and bases for the struggles which have unfolded globally, focusing most of their attention to Egypt, Spain,and Greece. Each of these three areas will be connected to in the subsequent days of the retreat, with interviews and reports on the present context. We will also attempt to open up to the historical links which connect our own time to prior epochs of total or economic crises. What can we learn from these prior moments of social and political upheaval? What kind of movements were produced to respond to the crises and what were the results of those struggles. 1-4PM A Global Revolution? -- The evolution of the Occupy Movements draw their inspiration from and connect strongly to a global context. What do we need to understand about some of these precedents and can this knowledge build stronger solidarities between struggles taking place in very different parts of the world? Marianne Maeckelbergh and Brandon Jourdan have been travelling, researching, and making short films about responses to the economic crisis, occupy and current uprisings across the United States, Europe and in Egypt. They will be presenting their films on Spain, Greece and Egypt with a short update on actions taken over the past few months in these countries. There have been large-scale housing occupations and demonstrations in Spain, massive and continuous strikes, occupations, riots, and self-reduction campaigns in Greece, and an ongoing revolution in Egypt. The films will be followed by a discussion about lessons learned from abroad, similarities and differences between the many locations and ideas for action within the United States. 5 -9PM Three Crises: 30s-70s-Today. --Do we still care what happens to the means of production?

--How does autonomy relate to hegemony?

--Is there one best way to dismantle imperialism?

--What really got under the Establishment's skin?

--Should radicals think about unwanted consequences? Financial collapse, economic depression, political turmoil, breakdown of international relations, riots in the street. At least once every forty or fifty years, society actually changes. The idea of this session is to open up a few of the major questions that emerged in last fall's history seminar at Mess Hall in Chicago. Brian Holmes will attempt to introduce each of the questions and open up to reflections and responses after each articulation.

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Perspectives On the second day, we will attempt to bring ouselves directly into the present. We will begin with a session organized by Direct Action working group involving a dialogical process where those involved will think and reflect about where this movement may be 6 months from now. And what kind of actions could bring this movement there.



This will be followed up by a presentation by Andrew Ross about a campaign to encourage students and former students to go on a debt strike. Andrew will speak about the debt as a central element in contemporary struggles and responses to the campaign thus far. This will be followed by an attempt to discuss the recent experience and struggles of students against austerity measures as well as efforts to generalize their struggles into a larger political context. In addition to encouraging students to attend, we have invited several guests like Martha Rosler and Ben Morea to offer some of their own experiences on the role of students in the struggles in the 60's and 70's.



The final part of the day, will be a talk by Brian Holmes, where he will try to outline the potential 12-4PM



Welcome to the New Paradigm



-- Where is this movement headed, what kind of actions will orient towards these horizons?



This will be a meeting facilitated by the Direct Action working group and oriented toward thinking about the next 6 months and speaking to one another about the types of actions and ideas and questions and horizons people feel would be important to work around / toward.

4 :15 -6:15 PM

Debt Refusal--The Next Step in Reclaiming Our Lives from Financial Elites? This will be a discussion about the politics of debt, and will focus on the problem of student debt--a form of indenture that has mushroomed into a national scandal and will include. As a part of the education and empowerment working group, Andrew Ross and other organizers of the Occupy Student Debt Campaign will present and describe the career of the campaign and analyze some of the responses to the concept of debt refusal from various parts of the political spectrum.



6:15-8:15PM



Student Movements, Past & Present



-- Student participation within the occupation movement, what are it's prospects and limitations?

-- Does the student movement have the potential to break out of the identity of 'student' and expose the interconnectedness of the university to the larger processes of class consolidation and neoliberal policies?

-- What can be learned from the students movements from the 60's?



The attempt to further indebt and limit the potential for those studying to live outside the constraints of those imposed by the logic and language of capital has lead to strong protest movements and occupations in universities in these last few years. T his session will be an attempt to invite students and former students to reflect on the challenges and questions confronting the role of students in this wider political struggle today. We will be joined by Martha Rosler and Ben Morea.



8:15 PM

We have determined that after Saturday's full discussions, we will keep this slot open, either revisiting the questions from Saturday evening discussion, or keeping this space open for the continuation of the conversation from the prior sessions.



[the below talk is cancelled]



Beyond Financial Governance,

or: Profanity and its Uses



Financially driven globalization was the capitalist answer to the locally and nationally rooted labor movements, political protests and ecological concerns of the 1960s. Computerized trading has now become the highest form of government, and bankers are the secular priests of our era. The act of profanation, according to Giorgio Agamben, means returning that which is sacred to common use.



-- Is that what OWS has been doing?

-- How do we go further?

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Body Practices : Spatial Politics "to attack the body is to attack the right itself, since the right is precisely what is exerced by the body on the street" The use of Bodies and (in) Space have been two critical elements of the emergent political movements of 2011 (eternal?). This day will be dedicated to thinking about the spatial practices which have emerged over the last year. We would like to invite all those interested in these issues to join us. We will begin with a walk that will enter a kind of taxonomy of the sites and practices which have emerged this last Fall. We also hope the walk will also be a way to activate and enter the conversation which will take place in the evening, oriented toward some questions about the role of space and the use of bodies in liberating spaces, reasserting a common right to the city, and potentially blocking the flow of relentless enclosure.

Pt. 1 (walk) 5:30-7:30PM Meet at 16 Beaver at 5:00



Pt. 2 (discussion) 8PM Bodies and Spaces Matter: On Spatial Politics, Spatial Practices and the Performativity of Reclaiming the Common(s)



Squares, parks, streets, bridges, ports, banks, factories, offices, campuses, museums, gardens, farms, forests, rivers, atmospheres, houses, apartments, community centers, neighborhoods, zoning districts, cities, towns, villages, camps... No space is ever neutral; every space is governed in some form or another by various combinations of institutional and economic power at local, national, and planetary scales. In some cases, these spatio-political relationships are brutally evident, while in others they may be obscure, illegible, or simply taken for granted in the course of everyday life. From the encampments of Tahrir Square to the foreclosed homes of East New York and beyond, the movements of the past year have brought questions of spatial politics to the forefront of theory and practice, strategy and tactics. These movements have involved the performative appropriation and transformation of physical spaces--whether officially designated "public," "private" or something in-between-- for common occupation and use. In doing so they have also necessarily raised questions about what Judith Butler, following Hannah Arendt, has recently called "the space of public appearance": who can appear where and when, doing what, and what are the conditions for this appearance? Social media networks and the spaces they create have clearly been one of the necessary enabling conditions for recent movements; but commentators have sometimes overemphasized the latter at the expense of "real" bodies assembling in physical spaces--and the forms of violence to which these assembling bodies have been subjected by police and security forces.



Given the central role bodies in space have played in the encampments and occupation movements, we thought to begin the weeday discussions with a focused inquiry into new uses of space and our bodies in the context of political struggle inside the city. The evening will include a performative contribution to the debate by Randy Martin. Among the questions to be explored this Monday include: -- Does the meaning of "occupation" necessarily involve physical encampment of the sort that took place at Zuccotti Park?

-- What forms of life are prefigured in such occupations, and how might they relate to the transformation of political and economic life at larger scales?

-- What are some emerging spatio-political possibilities for New York as we enter the new year?

-- What have the spatial practices of these last months of occupy and experiments globally brought to the fore in terms of our thinking around the use of space?

-- How do they relate to or differ from the bodily ‘repertoires’ and spatial practices of past social movements?

-- What qualities do we associate with the postures, gestures, bodily movements we see in these movements?

-- How might techniques of physical occupation – including sleeping, eating, and reproducing life in a specific space – be understood as political speech in its own right?

-- How to understand these encampments both as temporarily ‘utopian’ realized places, where new - and more horizontal - sociabilities and redistribution of labor ‘immediately’ occur and also as sites of resistance, highly mediatized and completely surounded by the police? ...........(i don´t like this formulation but... how can we say something of this kind?)

- - What techniques of resistance and participation are being rehearsed here?

-- What have these processes revealed about the role of our bodies in the space of the city, in the space of political struggle?

--How to address the struggles for and through the use of space and body in light of the force and violence employed by the police body?

-- Is the occupation and liberation of new space in the city critical for sustaining these movements?

-- What kind of small-scale spatial experiments may potentially contribute to longer term goals of the movements?

-- What does it mean to occupy a space (like this), assembling (like this), and moving - or not moving (like this)?

-- What spaces are being contested and which new spaces are being created?

-- What are people fighting for when they struggle for these spaces?

-- How can these bodies -sleeping, eating, occupying … temporarly living there- be understood as signifying or embodying?

-- How is this “being there in person” different from representing …a political party, an agenda, a group of interests?

















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Egypt and Greece (in focus) & the Strike The fourth day will resume our inquiry into the global context of this struggle. It is our belief that any actions taking place within the US can only resonate further and add to the struggle for global solidarity and social justice through an awareness of developments elsewhere. For this reason, we will organize a series of Skype interviews with comrades in Egypt and in Greece. These conversations will be followed by a discussion around the possibilities for different forms of strike or refusal to pay movements, including calls for a General Strike. 4-5:30PM Jacquie Soohen (www.bignoisefilms.com) and Lobna Darwish (www.mosireen.org) will be joining us in person and online, respectively, for an update on the Egyptian context. And a discussion about potential ways of building up existing solidarity. 6-7:30PM This session will include an interview with Dimitris Dalakoglou, co-editor of Revolt and Crisis in Greece, is one of the guests confirmed to speak about the current situation in Athens. We will be also inviting friends in the city who can add to this discussion.

8PM On The General Strike



A discussion and open work space for a General Strike, and how it could be deployed - what are our historical and political conceptions of the strike, how do they relate to our present contexts, and what forms of communication and solidarity are necessary to see the strike we want to see.



Some questions:

-- Who calls for the strike, who strikes, what do we do during the strike, and is there an AFTER the strike?

-- What activities do we expect to precede this call, and what do we expect to follow?



During the Wisconsin protests in the Spring of 2011 the threat of the General Strike re-entered popular consciousness, but it existed, as in George Sorel's work, only as myth, the spectre of a proletariat unrealized. Following the occupation of Zuccotti Park on September 17th, which was for many the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement, murmurs of this myth began to rise again.



On October 8th Nikolas Kozloff wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazeera English, "What chance a general strike in Manhattan?" Thus far, the answer has been none.



But we saw Occupy Oakland call for a General Strike for November 2nd, followed by Occupy Dallas' call for November 30th. We have recently seen many calling for May 1st, 2012 Mayday, to be America's first national General Strike. Rosa Luxemburg distinguished between the demonstrative and fighting general strike. W.E.B. Du Bois suggested America's first general strike was carried out by former slaves who refused to continue working on plantations, leading to civil war. Can we have a general strike which is not instrumentalized, but is a political act, a step towards definitive refusal or revolt? We would like to not just create a space for general open discussion, but also a space to work together toward existing plans to carry out or experiment with strikes. SUGGESTED READINGS: --



Rosa Luxemburg, 1906

The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions

Nikolas Kozloff, 2011

What Chance a General Strike in Manhattan?

Society of Enemies, 2011

A Message to the Partisans, in Advance of the General Strike

Society of Enemies, 2011

Blockading the Port is Only the First of Many Last Resorts



BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Reflections on Violence - George Sorel, 1908

The General Strike - Bill Haywood, 1911

Critique of Violence - Walter Benjamin, 1921

The General Strike - Ralph Chaplin, 1933

The General Strike - W.E.B. Du Bois, 1935 Endnote:



The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. ... True, there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution, one should repeat, doesn't need 'violence'. The general strike, as practiced in Seattle, is in and of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community... That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt – no matter how achieved.



Seattle General Strike











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T he Feminist (re)Turn & Japan (in focus)



The fifth day will begin with a meeting with the Feminist Direct Action working group. This will be followed by a discussion with them about the need to construct a feiminst direct action group and what are some of the concerns or questions that have emerged within the occupy movements from a feminist perspective. We are working to also bring together different thinkers and activists committed to a feminist critique to explore and discuss the occupy movements from a feminist perspective. We will also be hosting a session that will try to bring together some reports from Japan, relating to Fukushima and questions that it may also raise and contribute to thinking about the relations of the dictatorship of finance to ecological and humanitarian disasters. 12-2PM Feminist Direct Action Working Group Meeting 2:30-5:30PM Feminism in the context of the Occupy Movements and the Movement of the Squares. We will attempt to open up a discussion of concerns, critiques, and implicit insights of feminism that resonate not only with a critique of capitalism and patriarchy, but directly touch on questions raised in and through the struggles of 2011. 6:00-7:30PM

This discussion will be organized around the relation to Native American history, traditional experiences and wisdom in the context of the Occupy movements.



Bill Record, from the Council of OWS Elders will speak about Native American Peace Principles which were the basis of the Iroquois Confederacy. Traditional Cultures lasted for thousands of years and during that time they developed sophisticated cultural models that sustained their people. Things like the Peace Principles, grief management, celebration, ceremony, storytelling, elder wisdom etc. He wants to ask: How can we look to Traditional Cultures for Positive Cultural Teachings that will assist the OWS Movement in its growth?



We will also have other guests who will speak to some of the questions they feel are important to be addressed from a Native American perspective.



Among the questions that we as a group are interested in:



What is our relation to subjugated knowledges and experiences? What is the ethical relation we could have with these knowledges and principles? In maintaining a relation with such principles, must one not also reckon with or address the current and historical injustices of the oppressed communities from which these knowledges emerge? How can contemporary movements address the unequal force with which those same communities today suffer the consequences of economic, social, political and ecological injustice ?



8:00-12PM Fukushima in the Shadows of Occupy Since the conversations in the summer relating to the political developments ongoing in 2011, we have tried at the space to also remain vigilant to the catastrophe that is unfolding in Japan since the earthquakes, tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear fallout. As much as Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Portugal, the Common Good referendum in Italy, the struggles in Yemen, Syria, Lybia, ..., the students protests in Chile, Puerto Rico, the uprisings in London, ... Fukushima has underlined one of the key nodes where the ecological disaster confronting the entire globe meets the imperative for 'growth', 'development,' and 'profits' no matter the cost. We will be joined by Marty Lucas, who will be presenting interviews from a trip this December and January in Japan where he conducted interviews with activists. We will also be joined by Yuko Tonohira who is one of the co-editors of j-fissures, an online collection and repository of translated texts relating to Fukushima and its aftermath.

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Direct Democracy The sixth day will be focused on organizing some discussions and a potential workshop around the idea and practice of direct democracy. This event is organized with the Direct Democracy working group. We will attempt to construct a space to imagine what this term can mean, what kinds of practices it implies, and how these movements may experiment further and retain a critical relation to what this term/notion implies. 3-5PM We will host a workshop which will put into play techniques from the Theater of the Oppressed to explore together dynamics of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and concentration of power which impedes the ability of individuals or groups to act, to do, to practice or implement things for themselves, horizontally and not imposed. 5:30-7 PM Open space for non-programmed discussion 7:30-12:30PM Some prepratory questions for a discussion: Question 1: What creates bureaucracy and hierarchy within our forms of organizing, and is it possible to avoid it?



Question 2: What are the various ways of praxis of direct democracy that arise autonomously of existing historical and political structures today?



Question 3: Can direct democracy as an open process and an act of assembly become a turning point to address and participate in anti-capitalist, anti-state struggles and issues of solidarity? [This meeting turned into a 5 hour discussion about the limits and potentials for experimenting with forms of direct democracy]

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Cultures of Resistance, Resistances of Culture Culture and cultural practitioners have played a central role in the movements of the squares and occupations of 2011. Moreover, occupy wall street has become a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Day 7 will be dedicated to bringing together different individuals to reflect on the cultural questions of these movements and to also attempt to connect to prior histories of resistance and political struggle and the role culture has played. 6PM [ at MOMA] For Friday, we had initially thought to organize a day that would attempt to bridge inter-generationally the question of culture in the midst of powerful political and social tumult, crisis, or struggle. We thought to invite individuals who had been involved in the Black Panthers, Act Up!, or even historical efforts to organize artists like Art Workers Coalition and to place them into discussion with the cultures and cultural questions being posed within and through the Occupy Movements and broader political struggles today



We had thought to meet with participants of the Arts and Labor Committee, Art and Culture, Occupy Museums, Occupy Sothebys and other working groups. But a proposal has instead been made by the committe preparing day 7, to meet at MOMA at 6pm.



The Museum is free on Fridays as a result of the struggles waged by groups such as Art Workers Coalition.



Within the course of the evening, we will attempt to open up a consideration around these and other questions.



-- What kind of culture could emerge from a refusal to accept the systems of values imposed today by capitalism?

-- What kinds of cultures are called for, which could resist the reinforcement of a system that places the majority of the control over everything (e.g., culture, science, resources, common wealth, labor, life, political decisions, information, communication) to a small minority of individuals?

-- What kind of resistance will be necessary to alter the trend of corporatization of public institutions, including institutions of art?

-- What kinds of cultural shifts are necessary to refuse growth, refuse positivist discourses of progress, refuse patriarchy, refuse racism, refuse isolationism, refuse hetero-normativity, refuse class, refuse war, refuse over-consumption, refuse capitalist guilt/debt, ...?

-- In this midst of contemporary struggles against the crisis of everything, how can those who identify with and work inside the spheres of culture (e.g., artists, cultural producers, those who work in institutions of culture, education etc.) dis-identify with those institutions which purport to support art, but tacitly or explicitly depend upon, mimic, and help perpetuate systems based on the immiseration of the majority of the world's inhabitants?

-- What do cultures of the commons look like?

-- And how can public or non-profit cultural institutions be committed to a culture of the commons? How can these same institutions resist the becoming numbers of the world?





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(Other) Medias, (Other) Perspectives Day 8 and 9 will attempt to revisit the discussions we have had and consider together, each day, the potential course these movements could take.

1:00-3:30PM



Over the last decade, many of the most inspiring experiments and political struggles have unfolded in Central and Latin America. To begin our weekend's reflection on horizons or additional perspectives, we will be joined by Macela Olivera: Much has been made of privately owned public spaces in the framing of the occupation of Zucotti/Liberty park. But as we wrote in the days directly following the occupation, the terms private and public have in the midst of this crisis, shown themselves to be sometimes indiscernible.



Neoliberalism has involved not so much a process dismantling of the state, but a retooling and repurposing of its functions to serve corporate interests. The challenge of the commons is a challenge to break and contest this binary logic.



The attempts to privatize water and the defense of water as a commons finds itself on the front lines of struggle worldwide. In Italy, this last summer, a powerful referendum movement grew to legally constitute water as a common good, that is, neither public nor private.



The city of Cochabamba became famous for it’s defense and recuperation of water when it kicked out Bechtel in 2000, but what is the situation now?



Please join Marcela Olivera who was a key international liaison for the Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida during the Water Wars and is now is helping an Interamerican water rights network to explore these questions.



She writes: “Water is the one issue where everything intersects; it crosses over into political and economic issues in every region and in every country. People's struggles over water are also about having their voices heard, having better living conditions.... What we're fighting for in Bolivia and Latin America now is to put together effective, participatory control by the people over our social resources of water, health and education as an alternative to private control. But we're not searching for a single model for how to do things all over Latin America. I don't believe there is one solution to our problems; there are a lot of possibilities out there. Our realities are all so different, so diverse, that it would be impossible to say, ‘This will work for everybody.’”.



The question of inventing strategies toward a reclamation of a common(s) requires this ability to recognize global patterns and respond locally to specific contexts.



Contributors will include Marcela Olivera, Jodi Dean, Doug Hendwood, Marco Deseriis, Jack Bratich and others.



We would like to dedicate one session on indigenous movements and movements of the commons in Bolivia and beyond.



We will also be attempting to dedicate some attention this day to the question of media, press, technology, and various representations of the Occupy Movements. And we will orient discussions toward different perspectives on the struggles unfolding today, including anti-fracking campaigns and struggles to reassert a commons. 4-6:30PM



Other Medias



One cannot address the concentration of power, without also addressing the way consent is also sometimes doctored or manufactured. The last decade of the Bush Administration and the wars that were created were a case in point. The leaks, the actions of Anonymous, as well as the uses of social networks combined with actions and ecampments on the street have constructed a counter-power. But questions remain about the limits of this power, and more importantly as these movements grow, questions emerge about their strategies and relations to subvert or empty this power of the press and media to represent

en masse. Can this movement continue to think in terms of 'storylines' or 'narratives' as the mainstream media is so prone to do? How can a movement which purports to create autonomy also break away from the logics which reproduce existing structures and concentrations of power?



The goal of this session is to situate a discussion around the relations of the Occupy Movements to different forms of media and technologies of 'social networking'. We will try to involve and invite individuals in different and related working groups. Jack Bratich will help situate the conversation, which will open up a space for all who are interested.



Related text:

Occupy the Media

7-9:30PM Jodi Dean, Doug Hendwood, Marco Deseriis will try to build up our conversation around some questions they would like to pose for the group and the movements at large Jodi has offered the following as points of departure:



1. Recently a text has been circulating that argues that movement is experiencing a high bounce rate (folks coming to an initial event but, not finding a point of access or engagement, turning away). (http://tech.nycga.net/2012/01/05/three-complaints-about-ows/#close=1) Is this a real problem? Does the movement need to grow and if so how? Can the practices that worked well in the first phase scale up?



2. To what extent has the movement developed a set of guiding principles or commitments that make it no longer appropriate to think of the movement as non-partisan or post-political?



3. What does winning, success, victory look like? Can we imagine possible paths that might take us there? Do these paths provide any guidance when we consider what sorts of actions we undertake and support?



4. Does a wide array of dispersed actions/campaigns/interventions entail a dilution of force and effort, such that they all get lost in the overall flow of images and issues in communicative capitalism? Or does it entail something else entirely: perhaps the establishment of multiple beachheads, the infiltration of multiple issues, the political linking of multiple sites such that their underlying commonality in opposition to capitalism becomes apparent (the red thread)? .



Doug: "That looks good. I'm interested in talking about how we really need to think about the 99% - and, as Jodi has written, the degree to which the reticence about demands is symptomatic of an unwillingness to focus on fissures within. The whole notion of post-political is also an evasion of that sort, given that politics is about, in Margaret Atwood's phrase, who does what to whom and gets away with it.



Also, people frequently draw analogies betw OWS & the civil rights movement, which was similarly dispersed and ebbed and flowed. But the civil rights movement was directed against a very specific set of laws and practices - legally enforced segregation. OWS is not. What does that mean?" Related text:

A Movement without Demands?