Insurgent Notes No. 5 is now available!

[Kadir Ateş]

New York City Insurgent Notes No. 5, dealing mainly with the U.S. Occupy movement.

January 2012

The Occupy Movement in the United States
Editorial

New York City

Globalization of Capital, Globalization of Struggle
OWS and the Working Class
Kadir Ateş

Reports From the Occupy Wall Street Events of Mid-November
R.S.

Reflections on the New School Occupation
Arya Zahedi

NYC Transit Workers’ Fare Strike 2012: Can Occupy Open Horizons for a Frustrated Labor Movement?
Johnny Locks

Oakland

Occupy Oakland: The Port Shutdown and Beyond—All Eyes on Longview (Guest Article)
Jack Gerson

Seattle

The Radicalization of Decolonize/Occupy Seattle (Guest Article)
Black Orchid Collective

Baltimore

Letter from Baltimore
Curtis P.

Atlanta

Occupy Atlanta: Privilege Politics or Popular Self-Management for the Post-Civil Rights City (Guest Article)
Theo Tegemea and Z.A. Mrefu

Los Angeles

Occupy LA: The Worst of the Best
Amiri Barksdale and Ryann Scypion

Other Articles

The Sky Is Always Darkest Just Before the Dawn: Class Struggle in the US from the 2008 Crash to the Eve of the Occupations Movement
Loren Goldner

Boom and Bust… Literally
R.S.

Letter From France: French Trotskyist Traveling-Salesman Besancenot Touts Moth-Eaten Electoral Wares in New York
Y.C.

Letter From Spain: The November 2011 General Elections in Spain: Indignation Trapped in the Ballot Box
C.V.

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Check us out: Insurgent Notes (http://insurgentnotes.com/)

Comments and critiques are encouraged.

[9]

Just skimming the article on Occupy Seattle, it seems very overexcited and over the top, to be honest... I will have to read over it a bit more and will try to type up a more detailed critique when I have the time.

[Kadir Ateş]

nine, by all means a critique would be welcomed. Do let me know when you have something written.

[svenne]

I've only read a couple of the articles, and i pretty much find it to be a pretty good (without falling into the territory of using strange words and quoting Marx at everything) read if someone wants an intro to the new wave of discontent in the US.

[the last donut of the night]

Just skimming the article on Occupy Seattle, it seems very overexcited and over the top, to be honest... I will have to read over it a bit more and will try to type up a more detailed critique when I have the time.

yeah i just read the first paragraph and it seems too optimistic. but didnt know about this website, good shit

[Aspiring Humanist]

I think the author thinks the majority of Occupiers are interested in class struggle and labor power when all i hear from them are calls for bourgeois financial reforms
its well written though

[Kadir Ateş]

I think the author thinks the majority of Occupiers are interested in class struggle and labor power when all i hear from them are calls for bourgeois financial reforms
its well written though


Which author of which piece?

[Aspiring Humanist]

Which author of which piece?

The Radicalization of Decolonize/Occupy Seattle

Most of it is about OWS on the west coast, but it seems to generalizes the entire movement to Occupy Seattle
I don't doubt that the Seattle chapter is more radical than the New York, but I feel like the author is trying to give radical legitimacy to the entire Occupy movement from the actions of Seattle. I'm in no position to judge though, I've only been to the original OWS and the article is much much better than anything I could write, big props to whoever wrote it or contributed

[black magick hustla]

get a better graphic designer dont want something that looks like grandpa did it

[Kadir Ateş]

get a better graphic designer dont want something that looks like grandpa did it


Yeah, but it is hard when you don't have any hipsters communists in your ranks.

[black magick hustla]

i see some dude from the new school thats like a million hipster points

[kurr]

Eh. When it comes to sect rags, I'd rather read Workers Vanguard.

[black magick hustla]

lol are u kidding me, insurgent notes is infinitely better written than workers vanguard. besides, i dont think IN is a sect rag because its not a "political group".

[the last donut of the night]

get a better graphic designer dont want something that looks like grandpa did it

dont u disrespect old grampaps

[DaringMehring]

"Groups like the NPA, POI (Parti Ouvrier International) or even LO are focused on the waged petty bourgeoisie, white collar workers of the public sector (and secondarily of the private sector) and skilled strata of the working class in the private sector (at least where there are still some factories of a significant size)." -- from the article on France

It rightly attacks the NPA and others. But LO is different. You can hear in the author's tone that he/she knows it is a fabrication ("or even...") It is 100% not true. LO does not even allow such people to be full members. Every actual LO member I've met has been a worker or a professional revolutionary. It is not petit bourgeois! This publication is smearing them just the same as if someone would have said "the Cadets, Mensheviks, and even the Bolsheviks are..." It's just not true.

Aside from its lame attacks on LO, the rest of the article does a good job of attacking the Die Linke / NPA style of flabby parliamentary petit bourgeois and self-seeker "socialism."

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The piece on Seattle is a guest article, as indicated. It comes from a political group on the West Coast (Black Orchid Collective (http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/)). I also have problems with it.

I think a lot of the other stuff came out fairly well, even if I did pen some of it myself.

[Decolonize The Left]

Check us out: Insurgent Notes (http://insurgentnotes.com/)

Comments and critiques are encouraged.

Major respect for the site and the content. I might send you something at some point.

But seriously, you need to clean that website up. It's hard to navigate, hard to understand, some shit is capitalized and other shit isn't, overall it makes me not wanna read what's there.
Also, why is "Letters" a category at the top with "About" "Contact" etc...? Shouldn't it be a category?
Also, "Masthead" shouldn't be it's own thing. It should be in "About."
So the top bar should just be "Home - About - Contact - Past Issues - Search"

But all in all, I dig it. It just needs cleaning up. Cheers.

- August

EDIT: Some more shit.
So on the main page it's all barren, but if I click on an article (say, OWS and the working class), now I got all this shit on the right (archives, recent posts, more info) which isn't relevant to the fact that I'm reading the article at hand. That shit needs it's own space either at the top of the page or at the bottom, preferably just on the main page and not jumping out of each article.
Also, why are all the categories and tags listed right below the title? The author's name of course, but can't the rest of the stuff go at the bottom?

EDIT2: Some more shit.
How do you differentiate between the categories "Communism" and "Marxism" and "Politics"?
How do you differentiate between the categories "Occupy Movement" and "Occupy Wall Street"?
How do you differentiate between the categories "Class Struggle" and "Mass Movements"?
How do you differentiate between the categories "labor" and "unions" and "strikes"?
In short, don't a lot of the categories overlap and how is someone who is not privy to the subtle differences to navigate the site?

I apologize for my nit-picking. :blushing: I've had a lot of coffee this morning.

[HEAD ICE]

Even though I can't co-sign the talk about "direct democracy" and "workers self-management" the Atlanta article is excellent and a good overview of not just the problems of OA but the Occupy movement as a whole (both politically and structurally).

[kurr]

lol are u kidding me, insurgent notes is infinitely better written than workers vanguard.

Bro, are you kidding ME? Workers Vanguard is the most advanced vehicle for modern day Leftist thought and polemics from all around the world. Don't believe me? Just ask A Marxist Historian...

[9]

lol