Matt Stoller: The Anti-Politics of #OccupyWallStreet | naked capitalism | thursday 6 Oct 2011:
What do the people at #OccupyWallStreet actually want? What are their demands? For many people, this is THE question. So let me answer it.
What they want is to do exactly what they are doing. They want
to occupy Wall Street.
They have built a campsite full of life, where power is exercised according to their voices. It’s a small space, it’s a relatively
modest group of people at any one time, and the resources they command are few. But they are
practicing the politics of place, the politics of building a truly public space.
The general assemblies are the consensus-oriented group conversations at the heart of the occupations, where
repeating the speaking of others is the painstaking way th the group comes to make decisions. I spoke with a very experienced older DC hand who told me that he hasn’t been because he doesn’t have
the patience of the young.
I have been through a few general assemblies now, and they are remarkable because the point of the {form of th} assembly is to put listening at {th ctr} of decision-making.
There’s
no electronic amplification allowed in
Zuccotti Square [privately owned, publicly accessible park in financial district, lower Manhattan].
So the organizers have figured out an organic microphone system. A speaker says a half a sentence,
everyone in earshot repeats, until the whole park can hear that half a sentence. Then the speaker says another half a sentence. People use
hand signals to indicate approval, disapproval, get a move on, or various forms of objections and clarifications.
Frustrating, then refreshing. I felt
completely included as part of a community forum even though I had not been a speaker.
that's wh mary britting told becky & me, that everyone there few hundred was involved cld not be having separate conversations on fringes. What I realized is that
the act of listening, embedded in
the active reflecting of what the speaker was saying, created a far richer conversational space.
There is nothing so euphoric in a community sense as truly feeling heard.
Not a democracy in the sense of voting, but a democracy in the sense of truly respecting the humanity of everyone in the forum. It took work. It took patience. It created a communal sense of power, the power that comes from the trust and love of other people.
At the
forum {assembly (one that he attended)}, two fairly simple decisions were made. One, a nurse’s union endorsed #OccupyWallStreet, and pledged some food and offered nurses to train some of the protesters on first aid. The group accepted this endorsement. Two, some drag queens endorsed the protest, and offered food. They also said they would perform the next day. The group accepted this endorsement. That was it. These groups figured out ways they wanted to help, and did so.
To all those trying to figure out how to engage, here’s my advice. If you want to “help” #OccupyWallStreet, in New York or any place around the country,
think about what you can bring to a public space to make it more lively, interesting, or helpful.On a basic level, just bring yourself. If you are a cook, cook food and bring it. If you are a lawyer, offer free legal help. If you’re an artist, make art. If you’re Joe Stiglitz, go by and host a brief teach-in (as he actually did). If you can publish, make a newspaper.
One idea is to bring a laptop with internet access, and open it to the spiffy complaint page of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Put up a sign called “Complain About Your Bank” above the laptop, and show people how to use it. That’s useful. That shows people how to interact with their government and take action to empower themselves against banks.
Make the space better, and then enjoy what you’ve made.Or, if you want to fight politically, fight for the right to this public space. Advocate for keeping parks open.
It is going to be an interesting to watch how the organizations that are working, either formally or informally, on Obama’s reelection campaign, {may} work first to praise and then to co-opt these protest campsites.
Many liberal groups want to “help” by offering a more mainstream version, by explaining it to the press, by cheering how great the occupation is while carefully ensuring that wiser and more experienced hands eventually take over. These impulses are guiding by the received assumptions about
how power works in modern America. Power must flow through narrow
media channels, it must be packaged and
financed by corporations, unions, or foundations, it must be turned into revenue flows that can then be securitized. It must *scale* so leaders can channel it efficiently into the preset creek bed of modern capitalism. True public spaces like this one are mysteries to these groups: left, right, center in America are used to shopping mall politics.
#OccupyWallStreet is not a media object or a march. It is first and foremost a church of dissent, a space made sacred by a community. But like Medieval churches, it is also now the physical center of that community. It has become many things. {protest campsite.} public square. place to get news. daycare center. health care center. performance space. concert venue. carnival. library. school.
The general assembly, their main organizational & power-distribution mechanism, is organized around
ensuring equality of voice.
The premise of their politics is that #OccupyWallStreet isn’t designed to fit into your TV or newspaper. Nothing human really is, which is why our politics is so deformed.
well tv or newspapers can be reports of wh happens, rt? deformity is in the 'they' the well worn coins, slogans jingles. ok~ the designing to fit. the presentation. commodify your dissent. It’s why they don’t want to be “on message.”
liveliness, art, fun, humanity.
transnational, leftist, vs oppression (as bound up w economics, race, gender).
The first speech I heard at #OccupyWallStreet during soapbox time was a fairly explicit rejection of the notion of an American dream. Many people {some ppl at #Occupy} draw their inspiration from
Tahrir Square [major public town square in downtown Cairo, widely known after the Egyptian Revolution of 1919as Tahrir ('Liberation') Square and officially renamed after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, when Egypt changed fr a constitutional monarchy into a republic. The square was a focal point for the Egyptian Revolution of 2011].-Middle Seaman: We are used to a political paradigm that requires clear leadership, foot soldiers, and an agenda of some short. The non-violent heroes of the past Gandhi and Martin Luther King had an obvious agenda and foot soldiers. The Arab spring is actually not a great example for Occupy, because in countries where a non-violent uprising started, there was a clear dictator and the uprising always included groups with distinct political agendas contrary to the uprising itself.
Occupy seems to me an American made non-violent movement based on a modified King civil right movement. The core agenda is actually clear though it is not written anywhere. {We are the} 99 means, we the people are against the %1 oligarchy.
We are against the corruption of our political system; look we built a totally new system that has nothing to do with you and yours.
Occupy is now {expanded into} a Western World movement; I could {not} be more happy and more proud of the young people.
