Citizen empowerment and the direct democracy being practiced suggest Occupy Wall Street can reinvigorate the left.
The Occupy Wall Street protests in New York’s Zucotti Park seem to have settled in for the long haul, although only time will tell if they will have a lasting impact in spawning a new social movement or reinvigorating the left. The double-decker buses en route to the 9/11 memorial slow down, and tourists gawk: The protests seem to have become another stop on the downtown tour. Entrepreneurial vendors ribbon the park’s perimeter, selling the usual street food and sidewalk kitsch. Even the police officers assigned to the protest beat seem relaxed, enjoying a shift that promises street theatre and hopefully an afternoon in the warm fall sunshine. A lot of them are happily earning overtime pay. One generous sign even effused inclusiveness, stating “NYPD: You are the 99%”.
On the first afternoon that I hung out in the park, there were almost as many reporters and interlopers as protestors. Because of NYC’s famous diversity, the international media have no trouble finding people to interview in languages other than English. Given that one hallmark of the protests is their “leaderless-ness,” pretty much anyone qualifies as a spokesperson, which unfortunately translates into cartoonish television coverage. Dreadlocks and tattoos tend to attract the cameras.
At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss the protests as a lefty version of the Tea Party, a big tent of the disaffected with many an axe to grind – from ballooning student debt to fracking, overseas wars, nuclear power, and even debit-card charges. One young activist vaguely explained that he was protesting because “U.S. economic interests” were “hurting the world” – while making a half-hearted effort to hide a joint under the flap of his sleeping bag. However, I then listened to a matronly registered Republican who had voted for Bush explain why she was supporting the protestors: because they were being unfairly represented in the media and she felt that they truly were the 99 per cent, which, in the American context, means earning less than roughly $1,100,000 per year.
I briefly chatted with an eager and articulate volunteer, who thought the protests could result in a new form of coalition politics. He dismissed the critique that the protests were lacking in vision and leadership, decrying what he called a 20th-century approach to understanding a 21st-century social movement. What was important, in his view, was not the now, but what might come to be. On National Public Radio, I heard another defend the protests as “leaderful,” rather than leaderless, in reference to the citizen empowerment and direct democracy being practiced.
In reality, these activities are highly organized. Far from anarchism, there’s a lot of governance going on. Thirteen different working groups have been set up and hold public decision-making meetings. There’s an outdoor medical centre, a kitchen, a sign display and arts area featuring silkscreen production, a media hub, a lost-and-found, and even a library. Teach-ins are regularly held, and a large whiteboard announces who will be leading them, and when. Jeffrey Sachs and Barbara Ehrenreich were lined up – it’s becoming a progressive intellectual’s badge of honour to make an appearance.
In addition, “welcome desks” populate opposite corners of the plaza, donations are accepted but not actively solicited, and a newspaper – the Occupied Wall Street Journal – is published, though copies are difficult to find. I managed to get a copy in advance of a demonstration in Washington Square last Saturday. The front-page story: Naomi Klein’s address to the occupiers. Inside, a time-line makes it clear that the protestors envision their actions as part of a global wave of protests that began in Tunisia and Egypt last winter. A large banner carried by students from The New School reiterated the same point: “Arab Spring, European Summer, American Fall.”
A “general assembly area” has been designated, where announcements are made and decision-making meetings are held every day at 7 p.m. In order to gauge the crowd and the protesters’ level of enthusiasm and commitment, I purposefully attended a general assembly meeting on an evening when it was literally raining sideways. They certainly passed the bad-weather test.
At such meetings, consensus (defined as 90 per cent agreement on any resolution) is achieved with debate and a series of hand gestures that work remarkably well to ensure that voices are heard. And voices are heard, because the participants repeat in unison what any speaker is saying, in eight-to-10-word sound bytes, and projected via instant transcription on a hand-held screen. This process is laborious, but has the advantage of keeping everyone engaged. One of the speakers informed us that computer users in every country in the world are accessing the protests live … with the sad and predictable exception of North Korea. Fundraising is obviously going well, because the assembly debated the purchase of a biodiesel generator and more computer equipment to ensure that live streaming continues.
Like the Tea Partiers, the Wall Street occupiers believe average Americans have been left behind by their representatives in Washington. While the former blame the regulators for too much regulation, the latter blame them for too little. Both are tapping into populist disenfranchisement. According to a Rasmussen poll, 79 per cent of Americans agree with the statement that big banks have been bailed out but the middle class has been left behind. Meanwhile, the political yardsticks have already shifted: There’s considerable media and public discussion about tax policy and income inequality in the wake of nearly a full month’s occupation. Even Republican front-runner Mitt Romney feels compelled to comment.
It strikes me that at the moment of mobilization, protest movements tend to be profoundly ahistorical – perhaps a necessary precondition for living in the moment. It bears remembering that Wall Street has a rich background as prime real estate for dissent, and that movements stressing participatory democracy, civil disobedience, non-violence, and social justice have been around for centuries. There’s some good reading on this in the library – I noticed a copy of David Caute’s magisterial analysis of McCarthyism, The Great Fear, alongside a DIY guide to commodity futures trading. A bit of knowledge about the crackdowns of the past and the long and winding road of individual greed that lies behind the American Dream certainly wouldn’t hurt. As I follow the protests, I’m reading Michael Kazin’s perfectly timed new book American Dreamers, the subtitle of which is “How the Left Changed a Nation.” Could it happen again?
Origin
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment