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LETTER: Carrboro Commune shifting focus away from issues

Posted on March 29, 2012March 28, 2012 by Staff

I support the Occupy Movement locally, because I have spent my life fighting against arbitrary authority, and for social and economic justice.

I do not, however, find favor with Carrboro Commune. I feel they focus on issues that have little relevance to ordinary Carrborites. And they do so in a way that brings Occupy into disrepute.

Commune members rail against the arbitrary authority of corporate America. Yet, they employ a similar arbitrary authority to impose unwelcome behavior on a community from which they have received no permission.

They complain about the police response to their alleged civil disobedience, quite forgetting the incivility of their screaming match with the mayor only a few weeks before, after they had equally uncivilly broken into an empty office building.

I was present at the Carrboro Commune protest. I saw no harassment. What I saw was a police department properly and carefully exercising thoughtful concern with regards to a group that has a history of breaking the law in an uncivil fashion.

This in contrast to the response of the Chapel Hill Police last November to the break-in at the Yates building. And I would point out that I remain pretty much the last man standing and still actively calling for an independent investigation of that police reaction.

I have the greatest of respect for our Board of Aldermen. But they are sworn to uphold the law, so long as it remains the law. If they would prefer to protest that law, then they should resign, and join the protesters.

Furthermore, provided our police force operates within the policy guidelines monitored by the Board of Aldermen, then aldermen have no business publicly criticizing police officers whose professionalism does not allow them to respond.

The danger of folks (including aldermen) being allowed constantly to “decry” and protest, without someone calling them out, is that the center of gravity of the conversation gets moved by default.

And my greatest problem with Carrboro Commune and its supporters is that they are shifting focus away from the issues that are central to the fight for social and economic justice in our community. The concerns that are of real concern to ordinary folk, struggling to make ends meet. And we are letting them do so, way too passively.

Geoff Gilson
Carrboro

3 thoughts on “LETTER: Carrboro Commune shifting focus away from issues”

  1. James Wilson says:
    April 2, 2012 at 4:43 pm

    Hi there Geoff,

    I think you don’t understand that what the carrboro commune is all about is anti-corpratism, and to a lesser extent anti-capitalism–and that’s exactly what OCHC is all about. I would not like this building to become a CVS. I think I can say that you wouldn’t either. Why do you have to get up and make noise about how the commune isn’t serious, isn’t valid, or isn’t relevent, or isn’t civil?
    I don’t think that the mayor’s and Johnny’s screaming match was at all effective or conducive. There we agree. But it wasn’t just Johnny yelling at Mark Chilton, Mark did his own share of that.

    You say that the police are just doing their job–that the commune illigally occupied a building and they’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
    One: Was the occupation illigeal? Yes. Was it immoral? No. No-one was harmed in the slightist by forty anarchists peacefully entering and occupying a vacent structure(albeit loudly). It was a victimless crime. If I and a bunch of other anarchists decided to enter your home and occupy it for the duration, now, that would be immoral. There’s a difference between private and personal property.
    If I ever occupy your home, feel free to shot me in the head. I’d do the same to you. That said, the CVS building was not your home, nor anyone’s home, until we attempted to make it ours and the comunities’.
    Two: The police are most definatly harassing us. They are not just “upholding the law”. I had an encounter a few weeks ago with a carrboro police officer, in a public park, not engaged in any sort of anarchist action, and alone. The officer told me that if I continued associating with anarchists it would “go badly for me” and that the police would “come down hard, and come down fast.” He threatened me with arrest if I continued to openly proclaim my political affiliation. That’s not upholding the law. That’s police harrasement.

    I just don’t see what your problem is. If you agree that you don’t want a CVS there, and you oppose corpratism, and since the commune has actually been effective in agitating against CVS–then what is it you want?

  2. Sam Blythe says:
    April 3, 2012 at 7:48 pm

    Anti corporate? Really? Typing on a computer made by a corporation, sending messages to a news corporation over an infrastructure owned and operated by corporations.

    Get a job you hypocrite.

  3. James Wilson says:
    April 19, 2012 at 2:56 pm

    Got one, thanks much.

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