What will become of the Occupy movement in 2012?
As the year draws to a close and Time magazine anoints “The Protester” as their person of the year, progressives should be looking back at the Occupy Wall Street movement–now come to be known just as the Occupy movement–with an eye to 2012.
My city, Philadelphia, had one of the early Occupy encampments and was also one of the cities to have local government shut down the encampment under the guise of a long-proposed building project on the site outside City Hall where the encampment stood. The day after Christmas, Occupy Philly became one of several Occupy groups nationwide to advance a lawsuit claiming First Amendment infringement based on that shut down.
Other encampments are still thriving in some areas, but the movement has ceased to be a central news item, either pro or con.
Like many progressives, I was pleased an Occupy movement had sprung up in my city. Regardless of commentary on both sides of the two-party aisle lamenting the lack of focus the movement had, I thought the mere existence of a protest movement in the U.S. that was rippling across the big cities and some smaller towns was vital to the political discourse.
And while the movement had significant problems, it still coalesced action that had previously been dormant and woke up a whole segment of the population that had been sleepwalking through their own political lives.
When I visited the local Occupy encampment I was struck by two things–the terrible 13th century smell of a large group without 21st century sanitation and the intensity and depth of the comradery. Philadelphia has a large homeless population and the Occupy movement had managed to embrace and enfold many homeless people in their encampment.
That fact alone seemed to have created significant change for the betterment of the city. Plus, unlike many other cities, Occupy Philly had a strong demographic of people of color. And, like other cities, many queer protestors.
Back in early November, I was cataloguing the events here and noted the following:
No one expected snow in Philadelphia on Halloween weekend, but October 29 dawned blustery and snowy. First came the torrential rain in the middle of the night, then came the wet, heavy snow that turned to slush all across Dilworth Plaza outside City Hall.
For those of us warm and at home, the snow was an anomaly and an inconvenience and would start to snap tree branches and down power lines within hours, leaving close to 100,000 people in the city and outskirts without electricity.
But for the several hundred people encamped outside City Hall, the weather was wreaking havoc: the Occupy Philly people had decided they would be camping there throughout the winter, but no one expected winter to start in October.
Nevertheless, the weather didn’t deter the protesters. That day the planned march was on Temple University, a couple of miles up Broad Street, north of City Hall. Mayor Michael Nutter was hosting former President Bill Clinton and the protestors intended to mob the meeting. But flights were cancelled due to the snow and Clinton was unable to get to Philadelphia.
Still, the marchers trudged up Broad Street in the chill, wet, snowy afternoon and stood, their mouths taped shut with dollar bills, protesting the profit-making at the expense of the 99 percent that has been the mantra of the Occupy movement since it began September 17 in New York City on Wall Street.
It has been weeks of growing intensity as the movement has spread from New York to many major cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and the most fraught, Oakland.
Early on, the movement was peaceful and unfocused. A plethora of signs showed the Occupy folks to have many issues from the plight of the 99 percent to abolishing the Fed to demanding marriage equality. But as time and the movement have gone on, the focus has become directed and increasingly combative.
Attempts to block events, shut down banks and stock exchanges and health care conglomerates as well as protest politicians of both parties (in Philadelphia, protestors took on visits by both President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney) have occasionally ended in violent confrontations with police, most notably in Oakland and San Francisco.
What strikes many progressives watching the mostly youthful Occupy protestors is that they are collectivist and seemingly unafraid. While the movement seems largely white and under 30, it also has been clearly split along gender lines–there are as many women as men engaged in the movement and in most cities, women are leaders in the various encampments along with men. That has certainly been the case in Philadelphia.
As I watched the news reports of the Occupy Philly protestors marching up Broad Street in the cold, the heavy snow falling around them, I wondered if the movement could sustain itself through a winter in the Northeast where global warming has brought increasingly terrible blizzards. Yet I also felt glad that the group hadn’t taken to their tents and forgotten their mission for the day, regardless of the weather.
That snowy weekend passed, and the weather warmed slowly, even though power didn’t return to various locales for a week or more. When I asked friends and colleagues what they thought about the encampments and the oncoming winter, most people were of mixed mind–yes, it was good that there were protests, but it was costing the city (Philadelphia is the poorest of the top ten most populous cities and in terrible straits financially) a lot of money in police overtime and other costs.
Some friends were outright hostile and one local talk radio personality regularly referred to the group as the Occupoopers.
I spoke with some of the female leadership in the Occupy Philly group and was struck by the both the input of lesbian activists in the encampment as well as the forcefulness of the women in leadership roles. Although the Occupy groups assert that they are not hierarchical, there is indeed a clearly defined hierarchy which makes decisions and organizes and then holds group meetings with a call and response process that is both intriguingly inclusive and maddeningly unfocused.
But women are as likely to be leaders as men, which has been, I believe, a significant political statement throughout the movement’s tenure.
But where is the movement now? Just after Christmas, Occupy Iowa stated that they would be in evidence during the Caucus which begins the election season in earnest. According to the group, they will be holding all the candidates responsible, including President Obama.
Should those protests be staged, it would be an important–actually vital–reminder for the nation that there are indeed protestors out there who don’t agree with the pro-Wall Street, anti-Main Street policies and politics of both major parties.
As important a statement as the Occupy movement has made overall, it has not been without conflict or controversy. One of the more disturbing problems with many of the encampments has been sexual assault. In Philadelphia, two rapes were reported at the encampment. New York, Los Angeles and Oakland also reported sexual assaults. One woman I spoke with in Philadelphia said that sexual harassment of women Occupiers was an issue within the encampment there.
Whether this is just a by-product of people in close proximity and the melding of Occupy protestors with a largely volatile homeless population is unclear. What is clear, however, as the most recent events suggest, is that local governments tired early of the encampments and did everything possible to shut them down without appearing to infringe on civil liberties and free speech.
What was concerning in Philadelphia was how quickly the movement was shut down once the eviction occurred after Thanksgiving. Occupy Philly was offered a new space outside the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall, but the hours during which they would be allowed to protest there were limited to a 9 to 7 time period–no overnight, no tents, no permanent camping site.
The group refused and then seemed to disband as suddenly as it had convened. There have been protests in various spots throughout the city since the City Hall encampment was evicted, but the daily sight of a coalesced protest movement has evaporated.
There were few confrontations with police in Philadelphia, unlike in other cities, most notably Oakland and Atlanta. But the dwindling support from the larger population of the city certainly seemed to have an impact on whether the group reconvened once the eviction happened. Similar problems have occurred in other cities where the Occupy encampments have shut down.
All of which raises questions about what kind of protest will follow the 2012 political campaigning which ratchets up in January with the Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia voting. The fact that no Democrat or strong progressive candidate stepped forward to primary Obama is problematic enough, given his shoddy record on civil liberties issues and his support of Wall Street which is even more than that of the previous administration.
The group of Republican candidates will be winnowed down by the first three states voting–that knocked all but three candidates out of the democratic primary in 2008 and by the third state John Edwards had also pulled out, leaving a two-person race.
That is likely to be the case with the Republicans as well. Mitt Romney, whose liberal political stances while governor of Massachusetts make other Republicans nervous and actually put him slightly to the left of Obama on many issues, and Ron Paul, a titularly Libertarian candidate who has a surprisingly strong phalanx of supporters within the Occupy movement and disenfranchised liberals, despite the revival of his old newsletters which, while he disavows them, take a solidly anti-gay stance–those men will be the likely remaining candidates. Paul has hinted that if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination, he will run as a third-party candidate.
Does the Occupy movement have a future in 2012? Certainly there remains a compelling need for a viable, visible and most of all strong protest movement throughout the election year to hold all candidates accountable. Whether the Occupy movement has the force to reckon with the candidates is another question.
The strength of the protestors who have stood up to police brutality–the pepper spraying and the beatings–has been admirable. But a year is a long time to organize and continually act, and the one consistency in the Occupy movement has been vacillation: the lack of a set agenda, specific direction and clear goals have plagued the movement.
The ease with which some cities–my own included–have disbanded or just disappeared their movements remains a serious concern for those of us seeking a solid protest movement to follow and dog the presidential and congressional campaigns.
So as the year draws to a close, the Occupy movement leaves a big question mark for progressives. The movement was inclusive to a fault, with lesbians and other women in positions of both authority and strength. But where is the movement going–or is it going? Will Iowa actually provide a battleground or will the prohibitive weather impede the movement that seems only to have remained strong in warmer climes?
Throughout Europe the Occupy movement has maintained its strength and focus. But the inherent laziness of the body politic in the U.S. has repeatedly ceded power to the two main parties and sneered at any and all protest movements, from anti-war veterans to Gold Star mothers to Code Pink to Occupy Wall Street.
What 2012 holds for the year of the protester remains an open question–and one every queer, woman and poor or working class person in America needs to be seriously concerned about.