On the next Your Call, it's our Friday Media Roundtable. This week, we'll discuss media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Oakland, and around the country. Wednesday's general strike shut down one of the largest ports in the country, but ended with vandalism, arrests, and injuries. We'll be joined Joshua Holland, an editor and senior writer at AlterNet and Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera's Senior Washington correspondent, both of whom have been covering the Occupy Oakland movement this week. Join us live at 10 or send us an email to feedback@yourcallradio.org. Where did you see the best reporting this week? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.
Guests:
Joshua Holland, editor and senior writer at AlterNet
Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera's senior Washington correspondent
Click to Listen: Media Roundtable
I also appreciate your show, Rose, but would like to take issue with the characterization that your guests have provided regarding the sentiments of protestors toward acts of property destruction late Wednesday. I spent all day and much of the evening at the Oakland Occupation yesterday and spoke to nobody who thought that the General Strike had been "marred" by a few broken windows. There are many opinions about tactics, and there was a vibrant discussion about the viability of property destruction in the movement; the only allegations I heard of violence toward people was either police violence or "non-violent protestors" who assaulted "black block anarchists."
ReplyDeleteFar from the characterization that anarchists are "outside agitators," around half of the hundred or so speakers at last night's forum on "violence and property destruction" self-identified as anarchists. The liberal / democratic desire to police the movement, and dictate the terms of resistance to the violence of capital and the state is increasingly showing itself to be anti-democratic and at odds with the spirit of the times.