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Occupy Wall Street: FAQ
Nathan Schneider, The Nation
… So nobody is in charge? How do decisions get made?
The General Assembly has become the de facto decision-making body for the occupation at Liberty Plaza, just a few blocks north of Wall Street. (That was Zuccotti Park’s name before 2006, when the space was rebuilt by Brookfield Properties and renamed after its chairman, John Zuccotti.) Get ready for jargon: the General Assembly is a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system with roots in anarchist thought, and it’s akin to the assemblies that have been driving recent social movements around the world, in places like Argentina, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and so on. Working toward consensus is really hard, frustrating and slow. But the occupiers are taking their time. When they finally get to consensus on some issue, often after days and days of trying, the feeling is quite incredible. A mighty cheer fills the plaza. It’s hard to describe the experience of being among hundreds of passionate, rebellious, creative people who are all in agreement about something.
Fortunately, though, they don’t need to come to consensus about everything. Working alongside the General Assembly are an ever-growing number of committees and working groups—from Food and Media to Direct Action and Sanitation. Anyone is welcome to join one, and they each do their own thing, working in tacit coordination with the General Assembly as a whole. In the end, the hope is that every individual is empowered to make decisions and act as her or himself, for the good of the group.
What are the demands of the protesters?
Ugh—the zillion-dollar question. Again, the original Adbusters call asked, “What is our one demand?” Technically, there isn’t one yet. In the weeks leading up to September 17, the NYC General Assembly seemed to be veering away from the language of “demands” in the first place, largely because government institutions are already so shot through with corporate money that making specific demands would be pointless until the movement grew stronger politically. Instead, to begin with, they opted to make their demand the occupation itself—and the direct democracy taking place there—which in turn may or may not come up with some specific demand. When you think about it, this act is actually a pretty powerful statement against the corruption that Wall Street has come to represent. But since thinking is often too much to ask of the American mass media, the question of demands has turned into a massive PR challenge.
The General Assembly is currently in the midst of determining how it will come to consensus about unifying demands. It’s a really messy and interesting discussion. But don’t hold your breath.
Everyone in the plaza comes with their own way of thinking about what they’d like to see happen, of course. Along the north end of the plaza, there’s a collage of hundreds of cardboard signs people have made with slogans and demands on them. Bystanders stop and look at them, transfixed, all day long. The messages are all over the place, to be sure, but there’s also a certain coherence to them. That old standby, “People Before Profits,” seems to capture the gist fairly well. But also under discussion are a variety of other issues, ranging from ending the death penalty, to dismantling the military-industrial complex, to affordable healthcare, to more welcoming immigration policies. And more. It can be confusing, but then again these issues are all at some level interconnected.
(29 September 2011)
Also from The Nation, Video: Voices From Liberty Square.
Another good article by Nathan at YES! Magazine: “This is Just Practice”—The Story of the Wall Street Occupation . -BA
The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times
AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.
“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.
I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people, and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.
… Much of the sloganeering at “Occupy Wall Street” is pretty silly — but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.
(1 October 2011)
Keep It Simple, Keep It Real
– Hundreds Arrested on Bridge as Hundreds Die at Home
Donna Smith, Common Dreams
Hundreds of Wall Street protestors were arrested yesterday on the Brooklyn Bridge. Even the mainstream media is reporting that. That in itself is a milestone. For many years, groups organized by one faction or one political party or one self-motivated organization or special interest or another have tried to grab mainstream media attention and have failed to do so.
Advice to those out there protesting corporate greed and its stranglehold on all of us who choose not to be in the club wielding greed’s agenda? Keep it simple. Keep it real.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in media consulting and P.R. work has been spent trying to sell progressive and conservative positions. Hundreds of millions of dollars has been paid to progressive and conservative media spokespersons and even to writers and reporters who on the surface seem to be “independent” to ensure the message of those signing the checks.
… There will be some joiners welcome to the streets if authenticity is at the core of their joining. And likely someone will seek to step up and claim themselves as the leader or leaders of the movement and the moment. That will be interesting as often the best way to tell a leader’s authenticity is in how that leader has come to the point he or she has come to be elevated – upon whose shoulders and from what place of moral authority does the leader or do the leaders come? Keep it real. Keep it simple.
The lessons we all learned in the simplicity and innocence of childhood should still apply as we consider who is messaging and who is selling a message – who is movement building and who is power-seizing?
Donna Smith is a community organizer for National Nurses United (the new national arm of the California Nurses Association) and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.
(2 October 2011)
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
NYC General Assembly
This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on september 29, 2011
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
- They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
- They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
- They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
- They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
- They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
- They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
- They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
- They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
- They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
- They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
- They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
- They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
- They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
- They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
- They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
- They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
- They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
- They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
- They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
- They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
- They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
- They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
- They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
(1 October 2011)
Published on various sites on the Web. -BA
A Tale of Two Rallies
Pham Binh, ZNet
Spearheaded by the Granny Peace Brigade, 2,000 protestors marched from Liberty Plaza to join an anti-police brutality demonstration called in response to New York Police Department (NYPD) Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna’s world famous pepper spray rampage against peaceful Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors the Saturday prior.
The character of the two protests could not be more different.
Liberty Plaza was stuffed with people like a rush hour subway car. I did a couple counts from different vantage points and came up with about 2,000 people both times, well above the normal 200-300 who march near the stock exchange for the opening and closing bells every day or the 100-200 occupants who have made it their business to stay in the park until something in this country changes. People were packed tightly on all four edges of the park, and quite a few protestors were on the sidewalks adjacent to the park, unsure of whether the NYPD would keep us bottled up there or begin arresting us.
Before the Granny Peace Brigade stepped up Broadway toward 1 Police Plaza, the crowd at OWS commemorated past victims of police brutality – Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, and many, many others. Soon after, they heard from New York City’s most powerful union, Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, who represent the workers who operate the city’s massive public transit system.
TWU speakers made militant speeches in solidarity with OWS, denounced police brutality, and loudly asserted that people have the right to protest without fear of being attacked. Most of their speakers were black and seemed pleasantly surprised when the mostly white crowd repeated their every word using the “human microphone” tactic that was invented to get around the NYPD’s ban on megaphones. Local 100’s support came after OWS disrupted a Sotheby’s art auction in solidarity with their locked out union workers and marched to a postal workers’ rally against the fake crisis aimed at smashing the postal unions.
It seems solidarity is contagious, and it’s spreading all over the country.
As the march made its way up Broadway, the NYPD lined the street, separating protestors on the sidewalk from passing traffic. They were almost downright polite when they asked marchers to stay on the sidewalk in stark contrast to the heavy-handed tactics they used less than a week ago.
It’s obvious that there is no consistent tactical police policy coming from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. They are playing it by ear day by day, just as the activists are. Like in Egypt, every time they back down and let marches happen it bolsters the confidence of OWS; every time they clamp down, it infuriates people who are barely paying attention and support for OWS grows.
(2 October 2011)
Occupy Wall Street protest: NYPD accused of heavy-handed tactics
Ed Pilkington, Guardian
Force criticised by protesters, who claim they were deliberately led on to road before being penned in and arrested
—
The New York police department has come under criticism for heavy-handed tactics during the Occupy Wall Street march over Brooklyn bridge, in which more than 700 protesters were arrested and held for several hours.
Activists involved in the march, as well as commentators who are following the protest against inequality and corporate excess, claim the response of the city’s police force to the peaceful event was vastly out of proportion.
The total number of people who have been arrested in the past two weeks stands at almost 1,000 – substantially more than the number of financiers who led the world into the 2008 economic meltdown.
As Salman Rushdie put it in a tweet: “The world’s economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed.”
The march began on Saturday afternoon in Zuccotti Park, the Manhattan space that has been the base of the core of 200 or so OWS demonstrators. By the time it reached Brooklyn bridge it had swollen to several thousand.
Accounts vary as to how about 500 protesters found themselves on one lane of the road across the bridge. Some protesters accused the police of having led them on to the road as a sort of trap, after which they penned them in using orange netting and arrested them all.
Video clips posted on YouTube appeared to support this view, showing a small body of police officers marching on to the road ahead of the mass of demonstrators.
But the NYPD rejected that rendition of events, saying that many warnings were given by police to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway that runs across the bridge at a level above the road. Paul Browne, the deputy commissioner, said protesters were clearly told that if they went on to the road they would be arrested.
“Some complied and took the walkway without being arrested. Others proceeded on the Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway and were,” he said.
The police version of events was supported by some protesters.
(2 October 2011)
The Guardian also posted some striking photos: Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on Brooklyn bridge – in pictures. -BA
(1 October 2011)
Hundreds freed after New York Wall Street protest
BBC
Police in New York City have freed most of the more than 700 people arrested on Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday during a protest against corporate greed.
Fewer than 20 protesters are still held as they are yet to be identified.
Most of those freed were given citations for disorderly conduct and a criminal court summons.
The Occupy Wall Street group, camped in Manhattan’s financial district for two weeks, says it will continue its demonstrations.
(2 October 2011)
Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
Al Baker, Colin Moynihan and Sarah Maslin NIR, New York Times
Updated, 1:23 p.m. Sunday | In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested more than 700 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon.
The police said it was the marchers’ choice that led to the enforcement action.
“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”
But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.
“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.
A video on the YouTube page of a group called We Are Change shows some of the arrests.
(1 October 2011)
A better account than the changing lead sentence would indicate (see next image). -BA
NYT Rewrites its Stories
New York Times
(1 October 2011)
It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the NYT newsroom, as the journalists decided to rewrite the lead sentence. -BA
Young activist covers Occupy Boston
Ina, Youtube
A Necessary Introduction (#1)
General Assembly (#2)
Interviews (#3)
March (#4)
Snapshots (#5)
(1 October 2011)
The young history student who did these videos of Occupy Boston identifies himself as a militant leftist, but comes across as distinctly non-threatening. The videos, though meandering, capture a participants-eye view of the protest. Especially interesting was his remark that the confusion and excitement (“beautiful chaos”) is similar to what people felt in the early stages of mass social movements like the Russian Revolution.
I think the student has the authenticity and genuineness that Donna Smith called for in the earlier excerpt,
Keep It Simple, Keep It Real. It may be hard for grizzled old-timers like myself to identify with, but I think he personifies the new form of protest.
-BA
