What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" II [Draft/BETA][Preface]
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 08:28AM
Updated on Friday, May 25, 2012 at 12:18PM by
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[Video link to US Military propaganda exercise sent by Jez]
What Is the Soul of Occupy?
By Paul McLean
II
Robert Henri: Snow in New York, 1902
Source: Artcyclopedia; photograph by Michael Weinberg
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Do some great work, Son! Don't try to paint *good landscapes*. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you - your pleasure in the thing. Wit.
There are lots of people who can make sweet colors, nice tones, nice shapes of landscape, all done in nice broad and intelligent-looking brushwork.
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- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
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America is one of the few countries where May Day, the International Workers' Day, is not even a holiday – ironically enough, considering the fact the date was chosen to commemorate events that occurred in Chicago, during the struggle for the 8-hour day in 1886. During the cold war, the idea of unions signing on to a statement like this would have been inconceivable: in the 1960s, unionized workers were known to physically attack Wall Street protestors in the name of patriotic anti-communism. But the collapse of state socialism has made new alliances possible, and, in making common cause with occupiers, and the immigrant groups that first turned May Day into a national day of action in 2006, working-class organizations are also beginning to return to their roots—up to and including, the ideas and visions of the Haymarket martyrs themselves.
[Later, in May, in Chicago]
The words might be diplomatically chosen, but there's no mistaking what tradition is being invoked here. In endorsing a vision of universal equality, of the dissolution of national borders, and democratic self-governing communities, nurses, bus drivers, and construction workers at the heart of America's greatest capitalist metropolis are signing on to the vision, if not the tactics, of revolutionary anarchism.
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- David Graeber, "Occupy's Liberation from Liberalism; the real meaning of May Day"
BACK IN TIME
there's such a feeling in my room
it's like i'm in another calendar year
the future seems dreadful
it's obvious to all
the times have changed no more
we are certain to fall
the future seems worthless
society to blame
the price is out of reach
american con-game
there's such a pattern of thought here
it's like i'm just another rock 'n roll fool
i want to go back in time
i want to go back in time
the future seems dismal
for us in mid-thirties
the general opinion
never escapes gerdes
there's such a feeling in my room
it's like i'm in another part of the crowd
the future r.stevie
may well give up the fight
i want to go back in time
i want to go back in time
the future seems dreadful
it's obvious to me
the times have changed no moore
we can certainly see
there's such a lack of emotion
it's like i'm justanotherrock'nrollfool
the future seems dreadful
©1986 r.stevie moore
[PREFACE]: ...Pondering the soul of Occupy, considering art and spirit, reflecting on the "American Spring."