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The Battle for the Soul of Occupy Wall Street
Eight months after shaking the world, the movement finds itself divided about what comes next
Demonstrators link arms during Occupy Wall Street's May Day protests in New York.
SACHA LECCA/Rolling Stone
By MARK BINELLI
Rolling Stone, June 21, 2012
Rolling Stone, June 21, 2012
In early February, Marisa Holmes, a 25-year-old anarchist who had been one of the core organizers of Occupy Wall Street, was contacted by an assistant of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield – yes, that Ben and Jerry – looking to set up a conference call. Over the course of Occupy's long winter hibernation, when friends and foes alike wondered if the movement, not even six months old, had already lost its way, Ben and Jerry decided OWS needed a professional fundraising arm. The pair calculated that it would be possible, with help from fellow liberal activists like former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg, to infuse nearly $2 million into the movement, in the form of grants to various Occupy projects around the country and a permanent headquarters for OWS in New York.
But Ben and Jerry heard that Holmes and other members of Occupy had been expressing concerns. Holmes grew up in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, in a liberal, upper-middle-class family not so different, sensibility-wise, from the world of the ice cream moguls. Her father is an attorney; when Holmes was 14, she helped work on his campaign for city council. But since then, she'd become far more radical than her parents. For a while, she lived in a communal house in Detroit; last May, enthralled by the Arab Spring, she decided to travel to Egypt by herself, mere months after the uprising in Tahrir Square, to shoot a documentary, though she didn't speak a word of Arabic. In September, she bedded down in Zuccotti Park from the very first night of the Occupation, invited down by her friend David Graeber, the brilliant anarchist academic who has been credited with coming up with the slogan "We are the 99 percent."
Holmes herself is tiny, sleepy-eyed and temperamentally uncompromising. The latter trait can be tedious, like when she facilitates Occupy meetings and has people go around the room and state their names and gender-pronoun preferences, but also awesome, like the time Russell Simmons stopped by Zuccotti Park and wanted to be bumped up on the speakers' list and Holmes told him, "Are you crazy? You're number 12. Get used to it!" The conference call, suffice it to say, did not go well. Ben and Jerry seemed confused by her objections. "They said, 'What's the problem? Don't you want our money and support?' " Holmes recalls. Occupy had been founded on anarchist principles of "horizontalism" – leaderless direct democracy, most poetically embodied in the People's Microphone. "They didn't get that it was a problem to create a hierarchical nonprofit institution and pick out leaders," Holmes went on. "I was nice to them at first, but finally I said, 'I know that's how you've done things in the past, but that's not how we're doing it.'"
Holmes was especially wary of the offer because money had already proved so divisive within Occupy. The group had been flooded with donations in the wake of the police actions of the fall, but soon found itself consumed with squabbles over how to spend it. And petty bickering over things like subway MetroCards had highlighted not only tactical questions about what Occupy's next move should be, but a more existential crisis. Having so suddenly and unexpectedly captured the world's attention, now the question arose: What, exactly, would Occupy become?
For instance, many in Occupy had no problem with Ben and Jerry's offer. One of their key allies became Shen Tong, a 43-year-old software entrepreneur who, as a campus radical in Beijing in the late Eighties, had been one of the student leaders of the Tiananmen Square uprising, part of the delegation that attempted to negotiate with the Chinese government. Later, when the tanks rolled in, he ran into the streets, begging soldiers not to fire. One of them blew a hole through the face of the woman next to him. Shen barely managed to escape to Boston, where he would study philosophy and sociology at Harvard.
Now he lives in Soho, not terribly far from Zuccotti Park, with his wife and three young children. In person, he's weirdly ageless, with smooth skin, jet-black hair and an easy smile. Sipping an espresso at a cafe near his apartment, he looks around and says, "If we were having this conversation in Beijing, there would be security sitting at that table. We'd be followed everywhere we go."
Shen observed Occupy from a distance at first. After a few weeks, impressed that the movement had stuck to a clear, simple message and was attracting an unusually broad group of supporters, he went down to check it out with his kids. His second day there, he found himself thinking, "This is it" – something he'd never thought possible, a second Tiananmen moment. He stepped down as president of his software company to dedicate all of his time to Occupy, focusing on his particular skill set, infrastructure and resources, "the sort of really boring projects you need a global CEO to work on." Shen had no problem partnering with one-percenters like Ben and Jerry; as a student of global protest, he strongly believes Occupy requires more structure to carry on the fight.
"We wouldn't be here without anarchists," he says. "Purist idealists are very important in any transformative social movement. I was one! I understand it – they open the floodgates. But my job is different. It's about trying to create a mass movement. Or, at the very least, having mass outreach to the 99 percent."
But Occupy is already a mass movement, Marisa Holmes will tell you, angrily. She thinks Occupy just needs to keep doing what Occupy has been doing. "We don't ask permission," she says. "We don't make demands."
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-battle-for-the-soul-of-occupy-wall-street-20120621#ixzz1yjaX3qEB
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Occupy can be all over the map; have many voices, do many things. But there is one thing I do not think it can do without. Establishing permanent, safe and routinely used public assembly commons in every city and town in the nation. It is the soul of its mission to enable the people of this country to assert their first amendment right to assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances. On that matter, we have been most oppressed and most maligned since Occupy began. And, too, we bear much of the responsibility for the failure to achieve that essential part of our mission.
Public officials knew that when they employed technical rules to dilute our public and visible presence at our occupy zones. Police knew it when they enforced those rules in the most capricious, violent and messy ways possible. And, what did they know? They knew that if the public/visible part of our assemblies could be made to look ugly and scattered, then the 99% would stay afraid and stay away.
Try as we might to circumvent the "orders", to march on specific 1% targets, to splinter into hundreds of issues and "demands", once we lost our occupy zones we had lost the heart of the project. The 99%, much as they might have liked to, would not show up. There would be no tens-of-thousands, hundreds-of-thousands or even millions of people showing up in the occupy zones of their local communities to say "Enough!". That was the thing the 1% most feared. The public and visible complaint of the people, en mass, every day, every hour. That they would not have been able to hide, shunt aside, police away. But it didn't happen. Their tactic worked and there would be no American Spring. We had been effectively chased away, divided and conquered. The 99% would not be there. Courageous as the few who did stay and resist were, they could only be a tiny fraction - a .01% of the 99% - of what was required. That was a number the 1% could manage.
Well, not quite. I believe there is still a way to re-capture our zones and begin the long process to occupy and manifest our power. Most occupiers won't like it. Some will brand it as "counter-productive" or "counter-revolutionary". Still, I believe it can get us what we want, even if it will take much longer and be far less dramatic than it might otherwise have been.
What I suggest is that we establish ourselves at our occupy zones as a regular presence, without breaking "their" rules. We get our permits, we leave after sunset, we pick up the trash, we don't use tents...whatever local officials say are the "reasonable time, place, manner" constraints we must observe. We can let our lawyers argue the case. But, while they do and unless they get them changed, we follow those rules.
Just as long as each and every day our table is there, Occupy is there. Our banner is there, we are there passing out information, speaking with citizens, educating and being educated, inviting the press - all the things that say, "We are here, this is where we assemble.". Most of all, we make it known that this is the place where any citizen may bring their complaint or grievance about the government and be heard. We listen, we record, we advise and suggest when we can. When we can, we refer people directly to individuals, groups and organizations that may be able to further press the matter. In time, when the right to assemble is fully re-asserted, our assembly can press those grievances directly. But, for now, that is still a long ways off.
6 days a week, we do that, day in, day out. Our table, our information, our presence. What we are doing for the 99% is saying, this is the place where the people assemble, where grievances can be heard and demands for redress can begin. It isn't much, but it establishes Occupy as a routine and normal part of the public process, a place where the 99% can go that doesn't have a 2-minute limit on public input, or letters that get thrown in the trash, or demand campaign contributions to be heard. It doesn't resemble the ultimate assertion of the right to assemble; but it does assert that we have that right and we exercise it, even under limiting conditions.
In addition, we work to get other local groups and organizations in the community to use the occupy zone on those six days as well, to hold their own rallies and assemblies or use as the starting for their marches and protests. We encourage unions, teachers, health professionals, homeless, kids, environmentalists, animal rights people, women's groups, seniors - all kinds of 99% voices with a need to assemble, to come to the occupy zone and use it for a day to make their own statement and petition the government. Keep in mind that nearly every occupier also belongs to one or more of those "outside" groups. They can help to arrange and encourage those activities within them.
Occupy might maintain a calender for the zone and try to schedule those rally and protest events so they have maximum effect and don't conflict with one another. We can support with whatever supportive help we can manage. But we insure that those six days are available for others to come and use the park/zone for its real purpose. We don't endorse them or partner with them. We simply steward the place of assembly for and encourage others to use it. That begins to make it a place of routine assembly, without splintering ourselves into issues and demands. We recognize that all of those assemblies are parts of the movement, and every time we help make a space for them to do what they need to do, we are enabling the movement.
What about the remaining day/week? That's Occupy Day. That day of the week is reserved for Occupy. We hold our GAs, we conduct teach-ins, we have planning and strategy sessions, we picnic, we invite the community for special presentations, whatever invites the 99% to come and participate in occupy.
So, at heart, what I suggest is really very simple. We play by the rules (for now) and we occupy - regularly, dependably and strategically. 7 days we "table-in", 1 day Occupy assembles; and 6 days we do what we can to encourage and enable the groups and campaigns of the 99% to assemble at the occupy zone.
How a local zone does this is up to them, tailored to the needs and customs of their own community. Some will have food some not. Some may stream, others not. Some may wear jeans, some suits, some clown costumes. All the how of it is up to the local zone. But the basic structure is something that all must agree to do, the 7-6-1 plan, if you like. Any plan like this must have strong national consensus. It essentially marks the difference between what qualifies as a public commons 'occupy zone' and what does not. It needs to be well-explained and it should not interfere with other ideas about what occupy might do in addition. If some local zones want to hold protests, get arrested, host other actions, fine. But the table must stand, and it must be distanced from any action that might invite the 1% to forcibly remove it. We do that, and we've done our job.
Yes, it will take a long time before our zones become the nationally recognized First-amendment places of assembly. The rules will need to be changed and that will take a long time, too. But it does give structure and a strategy for achievement that Occupy now lacks. We've been scattered to the winds, and that takes its toll every day we permit that condition to persist. We should have learned by now that we simply cannot be all things to all people. It is the 1% that serve as the obstacle to success for any and every other issue. Occupy can only serve to help remove that obstacle so that others can achieve their specific goals through ordinary democratic process. Creating a permanent, public and visible assembly place, one that belongs to the 99% and cannot be usurped is our part in ensuring that. As we have witnessed, it is the one thing the 1% fears most, and most exposes them to being dis-empowered. Anarchists and others may not like the method much (too slow, too passive, etc), but it in no way prevents them from pursuing their own agenda.
The American Spring may come late. But I think this much would put it on the calendar. Maybe not for us; but for our kids. I'd be satisfied with that much. - red slider