9/17 > 9/11
Since my previous attempt to post about a big anniversary was a complete flop I thought I’d turn to something that’s at least a little easier and more pleasant to think about, the tenth anniversary of the actual official New York/Zuccotti Park-based “Occupy Wall Street” encampment/movement. This one is a lot more straightforward for me: It was the single biggest factor in my development as an activist and I believe the most important and positive thing that has happened on the American left since at least the 1970s.
For awhile I noticed a slight tendency to downplay or make fun of Occupy, or at least to question its continued relevance. Happily though it seems that the occasion of this Tenth Anniversary has led to mostly positive reminiscences and a re-assertion of OWS’s place amid the many 2010’s protest movements which followed it. Though Occupy drew on political movement’s of the 90s and 2000s such as the anti-globalization protests of the 90s and even (ironically) Barack Obama’s first Presidential campaign, I believe that virtually all of the left movements in the US such as 2014 and 2020 anti-police uprisings, the explosive growth of DSA, and most importantly the Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns wouldn’t have happened without Occupy opening a space for a direct critique of capitalism
In the 90s and 2000s, it seemed to me at least, the left didn’t really embrace class conflict in a within the US context. When they confronted capital it was often with the relatively abstract/intellectual lense of “free trade” or it was through campaigns to make you feel bad about your clothes being made in sweatshops overseas. (This was probably well intentioned and good but the implication to me seemed to be that there weren’t any similarly oppressed workers here in the US). Either that or it was organizing to stop a particular war. Occupy was the first time I saw US leftists directly take on inequality and class conflict here in the US and correctly name the enemies in the banking and financial service sector and their servants in the political class.
The major way the movement got this message out was through the brilliant “We are the 99%” slogan/tumblr. This framing and presentation of class conflict was in my opinion the single best act of political communication of my lifetime. Not as abstract or dated seeming as “the bourgeoisie” or “the ruling class” or “the capitalist class” the one percent, those few who have more wealth than 99% of the population and have virtually total control of our institutions because of it, is a much more straightforward and concrete way of understanding who our class enemies really are. I’m convinced this framing alone turned millions into socialists overnight.
Along with the “We are the 99%” framework the other great thing was the accompanying Tumblr. (I just looked and it’s still there but doesn’t seem to have been update since October 2013.)This is easily at a bare minimum the most worthwhile thing ever done with the Tumblr blogging platform. It consisted of thousands of crowd sourced stories of members of the 99% telling their stories of all the difficulties they’d dealt with in the current system, constant stories of student debt, medical debt, precarious jobs, and just straight up homelessness and poverty. These stories were an important part of the message as well in that they showed just how many people were suffering in what most of us are indoctrinated to believe is the best country in the world. But more importantly it showed how many people had similar problems which meant they were a broad social problem and not some individual moral failing.
Just like I was randomly in downtown Manhattan on 9/11 I but it doesn’t mean anything interesting I was also in downtown Manhattan on 9/17 and some subsequent days thereafter. I remember I was initially skeptical when I saw the call go out on social media. First of all, Wall Street itself had long since become a place of random non-profit and law firm offices so didn’t have the symbolic weight that Adbusters thought it did anymore. So, it was perhaps serendipitous that they got chased out of there and found Zuccotti Park. I never slept overnight there but spent many hours there just hanging out and talking to people, participated in some General Assemblies and in any big marches going on. It was a very welcoming space to basically any type of person, probably to a fault. While encampments in smaller cities were probably a more case of hard core anarchists holding space just for the sake of it, in the actual “Occupy Wall Street” it was a much more welcoming scene especially during the day when workers would come on their lunch breaks to try to talk to people and learn things, and almost never antagonistically.
This was my extent of overlap with the actual Occupy Wall Street movement but it was hugely transformative for me. Like a lot of Americans before Occupy I considered it sort of weird or embarrassing to actually be an activist or join a protest beyond electoral politics. But both things have been a huge part of my identity since. Occupy Wall Street looks great at 10 and so do the ensuing movements it’s inspired.
