Occupy Wall Street

Jackie DiSalvo

OCCUPY WALL STREET. On September 17, 2011 a group of protesters marching under the banner Occupy Wall Street (OWS), barred from Wall Street by the police, moved on to Zuccoti/Liberty Park where they set up an encampment. They remained until evicted, two months later. The protesters had responded to a call from Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication, further inspired by occupations in Spain and Greece, the Arab Spring, and the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. Proclaiming “We are the 99%,” a phrase that would become ubiquitous, they redefined American politics as class oppression, linking all abuses and injustice to the domination of the economy and politics by a ruling class composed of finance capital, corporations and the richest 1 percent.

Coming after a trillion-dollar bailout of banks while the broader population (and especially minorities) lost their homes and retirement funds, occupiers chanted, “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” This militant stance resonated around the world and manifested itself in more than 600 groups in the United States, more than 900 groups in eighty-two countries. The simplicity of the message and the autonomous structure of General Assemblies, with daily meetings, meant any group could easily form an independent Occupy chapter. The movement quickly spread to most major cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, DC, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Portland and to smaller cities like Tampa and Grand Rapids, even to small towns and in-out-of-the-way rural locations. The original OWS in New York inspired the many groups to replicate its main characteristics.

The inclusive message of OWS won wide support from individuals and institutions, including sections of the labor movement, for making economic inequality central to the political narrative in ways that others had not previously been able to do. Challenging the neoliberal opposition to regulations, to government spending that had served the needs of the working class, and to the consequent deficits, forty labor-connected groups, mostly unions, endorsed OWS. Large donations and personnel highlighted the new alliance. The National Health Care Workers Union (1199) sent nurses who ran a free medical clinic. Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, came from Washington DC (with a symbolic “100 BAGELS”) to meet with occupiers. Especially dramatic was the day-long shut down of the ports along the West Coast from Seattle and Oakland to Los Angeles with the ILWU (longshore workers) joining occupiers on a Teamsters’ picket against Sotheby’s and ending a months-long lock out.
Who were these occupiers? A survey by Baruch College Professor Hector. R. Cordero-Guzman found them to be mostly white males, although a people of color caucus and an Occupy Harlem appeared briefly. While Occupy claimed to be intergenerational, a large proportion—more in New York than other places— were under the age of thirty-five. These participants came mostly from privileged backgrounds and were highly educated, often in top-ranked colleges and graduate schools, but 80 percent were in the work force, with wages, conditions and prospects badly reduced from previous generations. A third were unemployed or under employed. Seemingly downwardly mobile and often burdened with debt, occupiers presented themselves as radicalized members of the “precariat.” One widely-seen sign read: “I lost my job and found an occupation.’’

Zucotti Park opened to a sidewalk on lower Broadway and the political process encouraged participation and drew newcomers in addition to experienced organizers, no few of them anarchists. Thereby, anarchists played a significant role in initiating the occupation and establishing its ground rules. Espousing “horizontalism,” anarchists endorsed participatory rather than representative democracy. Decisions required a modified consensus of 90 percent in the General Assembly, in which anyone present, even for the first time, could speak, vote, propose, or block resolutions. The “people’s mike” enhanced the feeling of collectivity, actually a necessity because the authorities had banned microphones. This tactic demanded that the near-by group repeat a speaker’s words to make them audible to those farther away.

OWS was structured (or non-structured) in Working Groups, which required no general approval. Anyone could speak on any topic or for any purpose. Working Groups served several functions, above all maintaining a supply of food, medical provisions, security, funds, sanitation facilities, and energy. Working Groups also oversaw communication and outreach. A library, television, media, computers for online information, press, print shop, and publications, including the Occupied Wall Street Journal and Tidal. Attempts to combine these groups into a general “Spokescouncil" that could speak for the whole failed, with representatives drifting in and out and police infiltration undermining its operation. Moreover, while the premise was leaderlessness, the Facilitation Working Group that enforced adherence to the anarchist structure played an outsized role.

The movement rejected fighting for reforms that fell short of its revolutionary aspirations. Its founding document enumerated grievances against systemic inequality and powerlessness of the 99 percent. The list of injustices specified the loss of homes, burden of student debt, denial of labor’s right to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, outsourcing of jobs to low-wage havens, absence of universal health care, suppression of freedom of the press, degradation of the environment, colonialism, militarism, and repression. Occupy groups around the country adopted their own priorities from this wide array of issues. Working groups supported other movements and backed their demands. After hurricane Sandy, for example, former occupiers mobilized thousands in Occupy Sandy for relief work; and, again, in Strike Debt, which raised funds to cancel medical and student debt. The force of the movement, however, was quickly spent.

The movement’s mission was best realized through political education: raising consciousness through formal and informal discussions. Study groups and general assemblies addressed by intellectual celebrities like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore as well as various rank-and-file activists offered insights and wisdom. Participants created highly inventive means to enhance outreach inventive approaches: projecting huge images on the exterior walls of buildings; humorous and cutting slogans on artful signs; poetry readings; and all kinds of music. From drum circles and sing-a-longs to performances by rappers like Lupe Fiasco, the marching band Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, the message was broadcast. The “Guitarmy" of hundreds of guitarists merged creativity and hope.

Political power proved, however, highly elusive. The dominant tactic of marches, at its peak supported by thousands of trade unionists reclaiming the radical tradition of Mayday, soon fizzled. Frequently, marchers shut down streets, tied up traffic, or blocked thoroughfares like the Brooklyn Bridge, where 800 protesters were arrested. Protesters also disrupted shareholders meetings or crowded crucial locations like the entrance to City Hall and its legislative chamber. But such disruptions also brought confrontation with the police, who ultimately, and sometimes quite brutally, cleared out the occupiers. Militant stand-offs in Occupy Oakland raised violence to a new level. Police repression often drew sympathy, but with little lasting effect.

Conflicting tendencies within OWS became more visible over time. For anarchists, the political meaning lay in Occupy fashioned as a mini-society that prefigured the mutual-aid utopia that hoped to create. That new society, they believed, would develop through the multiplication of such autonomous grouplets, as in two, three, many Zucotti Parks. In contrast, other activists aspired to build a powerful, militant, nationwide mass movement united by its opposition to the economic and political rulers.

FBI officials and Department of Homeland Security agents, it was later learned, had discussed “handling” the movement even before the actual occupation. According to Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, a conference call with mayors of eighteen cities addressed dealing with OWS before the coordinated crack-down by police during the week of November 15. After the authorities had cleared the encampments, OWS faded away. That the crackdown had been prepared and carried out under the Obama administration was a bitter pill for those Democrats and liberals who believed his message of “hope and change.”

Although the OWS movement did not reduce the power of Wall Street, it did change the political discourse by underscoring the connection between finance capitalism and the 1 percent. The attention to growing inequality would inspire political activists to demand a raise in the minimum wage, free college education, universal healthcare –all afforded by taxing the rich. In addition, OWS helped imbue legitimacy to the idea “democratic socialism.” This new inspiration no doubt played a role in the subsequent popularity of candidates who identified as democratic socialists, above all Bernie Sanders.

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Occupy Wall Street

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