The occupation at 38 Greene Street ended at 8PM on Sunday October 23rd, 28 hours after it began.
The administrators of the Artists Space, under the influence of their board of directors, brought in a paid private security force of five to affirm the sanctity of their non-profit private property.
Earlier, the Executive Director and his minions (apparently ignorant of their own exploitation and unwilling to join in the occupation) had been rudely shoved aside by a fraction of the movement which attempts, in sometimes distorted ways, to develop a critique of the existent. Clinging to the veneer of legitimacy still provided, in some minds, by the non-profit industrial complex, he took advantage of the occupiers’ patience and tolerance to hinder, as best he could, any real flourishing of rebellion in the space he had formerly controlled.
Threatening and reminding us of the illegal nature of the occupation and his power to bring down the NYPD on our heads, he belligerently intimidated while farcically insisting on his sympathy with the movement. If he did not immediately use police violence to evict the occupation, this was of course only because of his cowardly attachment to his so-called “radical” credentials, status and image.
But this was expected and predicted. We wasted enough words on the importance of the history of the space, so enclosed in its own past political work, that it is prevented from seriously engaging with the present. We were asked many times why we chose this space. We exposed all sides of the misunderstandings of the so-called New York radical scene. If we had had support we would have simply influenced the course of events, but that to us would have appeared as a false success. What for our enemies is weakness and naivety, for us are the tools to open up spaces that do not give any account of how and what action means, and what is its credibility.
We battle with saboteurs, camouflaged socialists, intellectual skepticism; and we say: Let’s occupy something else. Now we know who we can invite. The ones that don’t wish only for progress to our movement, but the efforts of our bodies to expose and threaten, to break structures and clichés which are not bound only in the arena of a bureaucratic village.
In this process we are educated about tactics of friend and enemy.
This was just a beginning. How can the rest of New York City remain unoccupied? It can’t. We will occupy everything.
