OWS Summer 'Disobedience School' prepares for Black Monday

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http://www.nationofchange.org/ows-summer-disobedience-school-prepares-black-monday-1338736228

Last Saturday saw the kickoff of Occupy Wall Street’s Summer Disobedience School (OWSDS), described in its “Curriculum” as a “twelve-week training program that will empower us to map, target, and disrupt sites of capitalist injustice across the city with a wide range of creative tactics accessible to people with all levels of experience.” The program, developed by the Direct Action Working Group, is divided into four three-week quarters, with each quarter taking a different city park as a staging-ground: Bryant Park, Central Park, Washington Square Park and, ultimately, Liberty Plaza. While focused primarily on tactical training, OWSDS is also a long-term strategic platform for the summer in advance of the one-year anniversary of OWS on September 17 — a date that is already looming large in the imagination of the movement under the sign of “Black Monday.”

The inaugural proceedings last Saturday at Bryant Park showed a theatrical display of school spirit. Around 60 Occupiers — observed at a cautious distance by a dozen or so police officers — gathered in a semicircle, and a large banner resembling a chalkboard was unfurled to create an impromptu stage. To the sound of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” a troupe of flag-bearing cheerleaders popped out from behind the banner, performing a kind of pep rally that concluded with the cry, “School is now in session!” and a “Pledge of Disobedience” spoken through the people’s mic that appropriated the ritual cadence and democratic claims of its patriotic source-text:

'We pledge disobedienceto the power of Wall Streetand the government of the 1 percentOne NoMany YesesAnother world is possiblewith liberty and justice for all.'

This was followed by brief orientation remarks by a headmasterly Amin Husain. Citing the core principles of OWSDS — education, empowerment, imagination, action — Husain emphasized the importance of creating space for everyone to “step up” in the planning and execution of direct actions, rather than relying on the same familiar faces to lead.

Next up, a group of facilitators ran through several “invisible theater” scenarios for disrupting business as usual in a bank lobby — ranging from slowdowns with the teller, to a group “melting” into a die-in on the floor, to going “civilian” by instantly snapping out of collective activity and disappearing as individuals into the normal flow of urban life.