by Bill Luoma

        *thanks latfmanarchists and whosoever lit the cop car onfire

I was sleeping at home
at 3am on October 25
when the alert came in.
Very heavy police presence. 
20 chp in parking lot nearby. 
Seems as if raid is imminent. 
Will update.
Raid confirmed. 
Get here immediately. 
Lines of riot cops marching toward camp.
Oakland eviction raid any minute! 
Pls call 
& wake up friends 
& get down to 14th & bdwy to help defend!
I'm not really popping a boner right now.

The emergency broadcast system 
made duck quacks 
on october 25th at 4am.
Sasha is sleeping.
Charles and Juliana are there.
Police are here.
Gave dispersal orders.
Please come!
If they get arrested
I will call in sick 
take care of Sasha
& pick them up.
Those straight white manarchists 
really need an accountability process right now.

The emergency broadcast system 
went beep at five-thirty am on october 25th.
I'm watching punkboyinsf on the livestream.
Raid went down at 5am. 
Both oscar grant plaza & snowpark. 
90+ arrests. Folks taken to 6th & wash, 
overflow to santa rita jail.
Ohai, work.
From the west oakland BART 
I can see helicopters over the plaza 
and other unidentifiable raptors 
confused and in need of fuel.

I put the emergency broadcast system
on vibrate at 11am on october 25 at work.
I'm on a project with Jorge Regula
trying to write a method
to determine if an android device
has a connection to the ad-hoc network.
I've got on my yellow shirt. 
Reconvene at Oklnd Main Library 
(14th&Madison) 4PM today! 
Spread the word! 
Fwd this to your contact list. 
Not all are receiving these txt alerts.

Just the facts
said the emergency broadcast system
on October 25 at 8th and Washington.
Bobo is Dereck and Kitten is Kenower.
Bobo is in the middle and Kitten is framing 
paint bombs, flash bangs and shotguns.
All painted cops are very unhappy.
Standoff at 14th and broadway. 
500+ Police have used tear gas several times this evening.
Scott Olsen 'has been shot' in the head 
with a 'non-lethal device'
and 'does not appear to die.'
Water Fountains @ Snow Park nr bathrm; 
nr Lake Chalet 14th & Lakeside; 
+open faucet on Alice btw 13th &14th 
@ side o brick bldg. 
Bring bottles!
What's going on oaxaca? 
Go ahead. Don't afraid.

The emergency broadcast system
prefigured a kind of washing & drinking 
at 10pm on october 25.
If you were gassed tonight 
undress and hose off outside. 
Don't bring the gas powder in the house with you. 
Chance of long term health effects.
Oh fuck, where's yopa when you need him?
Don't use that fucking hippie soap!

The emergency broadcast system
made a mistake at 10am on october 26.
Plz disregard previous msg. 
The action was mistakenly sent out as happening today. 
No Labor Picket @ Jail today. 
Back 2 R Streets @ 6pm Tonight!
What did I tell you about that fucking hippie soap?

The emergency broadcast system 
made old peculiar at 5pm on october 26.
GA tonight at 6pm at 14th and Broadway. 
If access to intersection is impossible 
we will reconverge at Oakland Public Library 
(14th and Madison).
I'm at home watching Sasha. 
I'm watching the global revolution livestream.
I'm watching the people say Oakland General Strike set for Nov 2! 
More cowbell please.

It's friday october 28 at 11am
and the emergency broadcast system
wants me to know.
Strike committee meeting tonight at 5pm at Oscar Grant Plaza. 
General Assembly at 6 pm.
Strike committee meeting tonight at 5pm at Oscar Grant Plaza. 
General Assembly at 6 pm.
I'm planning a very special kind of kittens action.

For the next few days
the emergency broadcast system
reminds me about the police 
who've been really good
at excercising their 2nd amendment rights
in the face of my 1st.
Support needed for 2 more 
arraignments today at 2pm. 
Wiley Manuel Courthouse. 
7th and Washington. 
Dept. 112.
Speakout against police violence at 6. 
Rubber bullets make big boo-boos on Bobo's body.

The day before the strike
the emergency broadcast system
gave out tactical info.
Tomorrow use twitter hashtag #OOstrike. 

Continuation of prev message. 
Please only use #OOstrike for tactical information. 
We want this to be a clear channel for information.
Marches for port leave at 4 and 5 sharp. 
I'll use twitter hashtag #OOstrike
when I find the port-o-pottie.

The emergency broadcast system
started tweeting at 8:30
on the morning of the general strike.
Marches on banks leaving after 9 am and 12 pm convergences. 
Anticapitalist march at 2 pm.
Someone masked up touches my shoulder
and seems to smile. ohai. 
I can't tell who it is 
but I say o, hey, like I do. 
Fuck you if you like commas.

The emergency broadcast system
distributed safe words
on the day of the general strike.
Legal hotline for today is 415.285.1011. 
Please write on body in indelible ink 
if you are doing direct action.
Does that include <<Death to Capitalism>> 
? or <<Long Live The Oakland Commune>>
? Either way it doesn't seem to matter 
as the cops are nowhere to be found.

The emergency broadcast system
made statements on the evening 
of the general strike.
ILWU reports shift change now at 8.  
To hold the picket 
please stay at port.
Please standby.
We are still waiting for confirmation 
that port is totally shut down, 
and then we can leave. 
Love builds up.
Nothing happens.

One thing is needed
said the emergency broadcast system
at 1:58am on the night of the general strike:
Support.
Plaza under attack by police. 
I've stopped dancing in front of the travelers aid building.
The banner doesn't say <<Occupy verything>>.
I'm seeing a lot of mutual aid from medics.
No one uses twitter hashtag #OOStrike.
12

by Scott J.

Image: Anjin Anhut Source: Wired.com

1. The Dark Knight Rises is by far the weakest of the three films in the Nolan Batman trilogy. The second half of the film degrades rapidly in believability, logic and even special effects. This may be due to a limitation in the creativity of the filmmakers but the problems with the film cannot be separated from its reactionary politics and are largely a consequence of them. However, it is not sufficient to dismiss it as “simply reactionary.” The film certainly attacks issues such as wealth redistribution that are relevant to Occupy Wall Street and the filmmakers even considered–before rejecting–the idea of filming at Zuccotti Park. However, the way in which these politics are expressed–or suppressed–needs to be analyzed specifically and understood both for the ideological implications but also regarding their effect on the story itself. For radicals, these two factors are not separate issues but should be considered inherently intertwined.

2. The previous films in the Nolan Batman series had reactionary elements but also mediating factors against those elements. Partially, there was an attempt to make the story of an urban vigilante more acceptable and partly there was a critique of vigilantism itself. These made the films not only more palatable but also far more dramatically compelling than they would have been otherwise. For example, the first film in the series featured Bruce Wayne training himself by stealing from his own corporation, rejecting revenge on his parents’ attacker and then battling organized crime that is enabled by a corrupt Gotham City Police Department. The second film also featured multiple analogies with the War on Terror, but simplistic readings of Batman as a heroic George W. Bush figure missed the point, which is the critique of the War on Terror embedded in the film. This is not to say that The Dark Knight was explicitly opposed to the War on Terror–rather, it contemplated the War on Terror even while it vacillated, but it’s vacillations at least made it interesting. So, Batman produced an NSA-worthy device which could spy on every citizen of Gotham City, but as soon as he used it he abandoned it due to his–belated–privacy concerns. Additionally, Batman tortured information out of the Joker, which would seem to be a defense of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” but the information was faulty and resulted in the death of an innocent person regardless. These factors showed a limited, liberal conscience in the previous films and made them much more interesting than they would have been otherwise, even if a radical critique of these issues were unsurprisingly absent. Unfortunately, these mediating factors are missing from the latest film.

3. The Dark Knight Rises is full of Occupy Wall Street themes, including explicit attacks on stock traders and all-out class war. Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) whispers to billionaire Bruce Wayne that “A storm is coming… You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” Later, Bane attacks a stock exchange and roughs up the bankers, stealing–read “redistributing”–billions of dollars, including from Wayne himself, who subsequently loses everything except his mansion. This leads Catwoman to quip in one of the more satisfying lines of dialog in the film that “the rich don’t even go broke like the rest of us.” None of this should be surprising, as one of the story credits is given to David S. Goyer, who is also credited as a writer of the video game Call of Duty : Black Ops II. Supposedly the villain in the game is a “narco terrorist who has been dubbed ‘the Messiah of the 99 percent.’” If that were not enough, there is also a nuclear device that threatens the entire city of Gotham which is created out of a failed green energy project that not only brought Gotham no energy but foolishly lost millions of dollars in private investments.

4. The Dark Knight Rises is not simply conservative, with a brutish thug who attacks Wall Street investor-types. Rather, it is also explicitly anti-revolutionary and contains references to both the French and Russian revolutions. Bane calls on the people of Gotham to take back their city, speaking to an audience of likely middle-class (and wealthier) Gothamites at a football game. This Revolution In One City is carried out by destroying the bridges, trapping the majority of Gotham’s police underground and freeing the city’s prisoners–who have been given lengthy sentences due to the “Dent Act”–who proceed to march out with their imprisoners’ firearms. The chaos that ensues throughout the city is predictable, but the imagery is significant. A French Revolution-like tribunal is established which sentences Gotham’s remaining police officers to death–or exile, which is certain death by walking across the city’s partially frozen river. This and other winter scenes recall moments in the Russian Revolution and civil war, and a later funeral includes a reading of the final lines of A Tale of Two Cities, referring to the unrestrained use of the guillotine in France. The lesson is clear–all revolutions result in tyranny, so before people like OWS supporters demand wealth redistribution, they may want to consider the ugly consequences, revolutionary tribunals apparently being one of the more obvious.

5. It is a problem for the filmmakers that class war, or at the very least class resentment, is popular among tens of millions of working-class people, which constitute a large part of the expected audience for the film. Unsurprisingly, then, this ideological bent against wealth redistribution and revolution causes serious problems in the story. In particular, there is a surprising lack of scenes showing ordinary people looting shopping malls or sipping champagne from the captured fortresses of the one percent. Many people in the audience would find these scenes appealing even if only as a cathartic fantasy in a morality tale about the consequences of such actions. But The Dark Knight Rises won’t even give us this much, instead leaving us with the image of horrified football spectators being greeted by their brutish liberator. Thus, we get all of the misery and none of the fun of revolution and class war, which is not only dishonest but frankly boring. Only Selina Kyle seems to relish the coming class war–before being inexplicably turned off by the results. There is, however, one concession in the plot to the “problem” of class resentment: Bruce Wayne losing the entirety of his wealth as the greatest victim of Bane’s redistributionist crusade. Wayne, it should be noted, takes this news in stride. He’s more concerned about the people of Gotham, of course. The problem for the story is that a billionaire saving the people from themselves–and from Wayne’s wealth–would be far too awkward for a film that seeks mass appeal. Better to make him more like an ordinary guy, a dispassionate defender of all of Gotham–not so coincidentally, the liberal ideal of the state–rather than a crusader for his rich friends. The writers seem to have realized that the only way to make Batman sympathetic in this situation is to bleed him dry and nearly kill him. But this leads to other problems.

6. The second half of the film descends into a convoluted mess, ending with Batman gliding over the ocean in a hoaky special effects scene reminiscent of a flying RoboCop. What brings us to this point is a set of plot contrivances that are essentially an expanded version of the James Bond villain who describes his plans precisely so that our hero can foil him. In this instance, Bane admits that he both wants the people of Gotham to take back their city and he wants them all dead. He is both a social revolutionary and a nihilist. What point he seeks to prove is unclear, other than the inherent dastardliness of wealth redistributors such as himself. Killing everybody is not enough for this story–he has to foment class war first in order to show its link to terrorism, which is also shown at the beginning when one of Bane’s devotees voluntarily dies in a plane crash. There is also the double-contrivance wherein the explosive device cannot be moved and Batman cannot access it anyway–until at the end he can access it, at which point it is perfectly mobile. This is not the plot the story needs, but the one the writers want. Having Batman instead battle a reluctant Gotham while he unredistributes Bruce Wayne’s wealth would have been far more interesting but ideologically far too complicated. There is no liberal conscience to grapple with here in part because of the emphasis on revolution, an issue on which both conservatives and liberals wholeheartedly agree, leaving us with no conflict or drama, simply a predictable Hollywood blockbuster.

7. The Dark Knight Rises could have delved into the issues of wealth inequality with far more complexity as there is a vast amount of untapped dramatic potential in the billionaire Batman fighting for his ideals while watching the world transform into something he cannot comprehend. Perhaps that is too much to ask of Hollywood, whose creative potential is hampered by the corporations that dominate it and their lackeys who are paid by them. Instead, what we have is a far weaker film than Nolan has ever made before, leaving the trilogy in a far, far weaker rest than it otherwise could have known.