Political Struggle in Search of Strategy

This piece discusses the author's experiences in the Occupy protests at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011 and the initial travel-ban litigation in 2017. It contrasts the different roles law and violence played in each and reflects on the significance of mass mobilizations for achieving the goals of political movements. The piece also situates these two experiences in the broader context of post-financial-crisis left politics; the conclusion builds on Stuart Hall's reflections on Thatcherism and highlights the need for strategic thinking to link disparate struggles in unified opposition to neoliberalism.