Thread by @OLAASM

Fuck it. I'm on one, so let's fucking go...

This particular twitter account (OLAASM) came out of Occupy Los Angeles (That's the "OLA" in my screenname.) That may not have been my first organizing experience, but it was a pretty formative one for me and I'm proud of some of the shit I stirred there.

Apologies to the few hundred followers who already know all of this and have heard me explain this time and again before. But I'm going to connect it to something I've been obsessing over recently and hope it makes that obsession make more sense to you.

This account was originally a collective, radical (pseudonymous) way to counter the official OccupyLA social media (which was pro-police, imagine that!) I hoped a collective would use it. That lasted about a month then all the people with access dropped off. Fine. It's just me.

I wanted it to be collective. To eschew individual recognition. To protect ourselves from opportunism (and the kind of bullshit we now see from "streamers"). Whatever. Shit that plagues every movement. Didn't work out. Fine. It's just me and has been since March 2012. Ok. Cool.

The only thing I could safely tweet about originally in that first month without pushback from others involved was police, because every tendency involved understood police were not our friends, so that became my focus. And that's how, honestly, I became ACAB dude. But...

Not because I was some expert on police. Definitely not because I had the most firsthand experience with police. But simply because I could tweet about it and the rest of the collective was fine with it. That's how I became "ACAB dude." Fortuitously:

The *only thing* the FBI ever noted OccupyLA for was the threat that *combining forces* between OccupyLA and prison and anti-police campaigns might pose to power. Otherwise, the FBI didn't give a fuck about OccupyLA.

This is what the FBI was worried about OccupyLA over. Not camping. Not sustained protest. Not liberal parades. Not protesting banks. Not home foreclosure, even.

They didn't want us to make common cause with people resisting jail expansion and police.

https://twitter.com/OLAASM/status/542473787409977344?s=20&t=guZy4aR0TdN9rzzTQHVaHg

We couldn't even *have* an anti-police-BRUTALITY committee at Occupy Los Angeles (in LOS ANGELES, CALIFUCKINGFORNIA!) Not an "anti police committee," mind you, not a "burn the precincts committee," we couldn't have a committee to address POLICE BRUTALITY. That's fucking wild.

I saw all this, a white anarchodude in Los Angeles, and was like, "what the fuck is going on here? How fucked is a movement *in Los Angeles* that can't even have an 'Anti-Police BRUTALITY Committee?" A joke. A joke is what it was. A sad fucking white liberal joke.

We tried, though. But every effort to do so was undermined. Absolutely by cop-hugging liberals. And also probably by cops themselves. Maybe even Feds. But who knows. But look at this shit. I lived it. Just embarrassing.

https://twitter.com/OLAASM/status/926122417730101249?s=20&t=guZy4aR0TdN9rzzTQHVaHg

So I kept tweeting. Even after Occupy died. And I focused on police. And I realized, or thought, fuck - there's something keeping people from realizing who the police are. And *we* (on Twitter) came up with #copaganda (collectively, from Black radical experience and observation.)

So I focused on that pretty hard from 2012-2019, thinking - we've got to dispel this force that is preventing people from realizing who and what police are. We have to break all the "trust in the police" shit I see in every poll. We will never win until we do.

So now. In 2023, when I see environmentalists like Steven Donziger trying to silo off "environmental activists" from anti-police activists or make special pleadings out of literally the coolest, *intersectional* direct action going on today... it's infuriating. Personally.

The shit #StopCopCity is doing is inspiring. Not just because it's militant and direct opposition in the forest where the state seeks to build this fascist death facility, but because it is *uniting* causes that too many have seen as separate for far too long.

What was done to Tort was a political hit. Assassination. It doesn't matter if they were a pacifist. It isn't true that they were the first activist killed by the state in the US. None of that connects struggles. All it does is make a unique circumstance out of this one.

But the whole point, the *thing* that makes them nervous (as seen in the one FBI memo about OccupyLA above), is people realizing these issues are interconnected.

And when people put in work to obscure that instead of clarify it, it makes me very suspicious and... angry. When people erase other people the state has murdered, for whatever reason, it makes me angry.

And that's why I keep talking about this:

https://twitter.com/OLAASM/status/1621255505430601729

Even if nobody reads it. Even if nobody shares it. Even if I'm the only one talking about it. Because I fucking remember that it was *the one thing* they didn't want in 2011 and I still think it's what they're afraid of today.

And if nobody reads this, either. Fuck it. I'll be back tomorrow to do it again.

Sorry my threads aren't pretty. Sorry I'm an ornery piece of shit. Sorry I suck at getting impressions or whatever fucking shit all those little multi-platform influencer gremlins are so good at. Sorry this thread is so long. Sorry the US is a fascist hellscape. lol

(I wrote this meandering, vilely self-important treatise after the horrible, "fund the police" SOTU and weeks of watching prominent people say unhelpful shit about Tort's assassination. I hope it helps people understand why I think how we talk about these things is important.)