Occupy Wall Street

I just spent a day and a half at the Occupy Wall St encampment in Liberty Plaza in NYC. Zuccoti Park, which the city renamed Liberty Plaza after 9-11, is on Broadway one block north of Trinity Church, between Wall St and the remaining World Trade Center buildings and reconstruction. About 500 people during the day and maybe half that at night have nonviolently taken over the park in the heart of the financial district since September 17 this year.
I was there late on day 16 (Sunday, October 2) and day 17 (Monday, October 3). These were fairly quiet days. On Saturday, over 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, when marchers heading to Brooklyn to involve other boroughs were allowed onto the roadway from the elevated walkway, and then arrested for being on the roadway, and given appearance tickets. It seemed a bait and switch tactic that may have been simple harassment, an information gathering operation (ID’s had to be shown to be released), or just bad communication. The second of these seems most plausible to me. A lawsuit has been filed. Mayor Bloomberg and his fellow billionaires have no clue and just want us to go away. I did not see or hear of any gratuitous uses of pepper spray on innocent marchers by some police as reported on some previous days. What I did see on Monday was an arrest of the fellow next to me, like me standing on Broadway holding up a sign overhead, swarmed upon and removed by police, presumably because he had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth which said “99%”--which refers to the complaint that 1% of the population controls most of the wealth. It seems to me that the hankie use was purely “free speech”, no matter what city regulations say. Much, much foot traffic, Big Apple style, and a lot of tour buses going by. A wonderful place to take a stand.
The encampment itself is well organized. There are committees for cleanup, comfort, information, volunteers, outreach, the general assembly, legal backup for arrestees, etc. There is a makeshift kitchen and serving area, sleeping areas, a hospital, a library, a sign-making area, a least two larger assembly areas for meetings and drum circles,etc. Since any electric sound system has been banned by the city, communication is by human megaphone. The speaker says a sentence or phrase which is then repeated by those close by. “Mike check” is the call to listen up. This system, while far from perfect, works fairly well, given adverse conditions.
I found the atmosphere to be a combination of determination and celebration. The quality of discussion is quite intense. A drum circle was going on simultaneously with Reverend Billy (of anti Christmas shopping-consumerism fame) holding forth. Amy Goodman and crew held a press conference on their settlement with Minneapolis about mistreatment in 2008 during the Republican Convention.
The music was sporadic, with reggae at one point and old Peter, Paul and Mary and Charlie King songs at another. I was touched shortly after I arrived by a small group near the back singing Charlie’s “Two Good Arms” about Sacco and Vanzetti from a couple of “Rise Up Singing” books. “All who know these two good arms know I never had to rob or kill. I can live by my own two hands and live well. All my life I have struggled to rid the earth of all such crimes”.
The “Occupied Wall Street Journal”, a free four page broadsheet has some good articles. The vision statement is a current consensus document listing grievances against corporate and militaristic abuses of power. It has links to websites and facebook and twitter. Looking it up is easy. Go to occupywallst.org, occupytogether.org, wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. Twitter: @occupywallstnyc, @nycsep17, or @occupywallst. Facebook: OccupyWallSt.
Government is by the General Assembly--a “horizontal, autonomous leaderless, modified consensus based system with roots in anarchist thought ...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”. This is an admirable anarchism where people take control of their own lives nonviolently at a grassroots level. This goes hand in hand with a needed type of socialism where we live “from each according to one’s abilities, to each according to one’s needs.” Consensus building takes time and energy, especially since conversations about unexamined white male privilege are necessary and ongoing. Again and again.
The real genius of this occupation is that it is deliberately going slow on developing goals and demands because it takes time to build a community with public dialogue and action. This Liberty Plaza, for now, is first of all a place for all to be heard. For the unemployed, the foreclosed upon, those whose pensions have been raided or destroyed, soldiers who have redeployed over and over to wars for resources for corporate America,for the homeless (some of whom have been fed here), for the impoverished of our ghettoes, for our over 2 million prisoners, for the victims of torture, rendition, drone bombings, and economic sanctions, for the so many working 2 or 3 or more mcjobs per family in order to survive, for unionized laborers, public and private, under siege. All of these need to be heard, here and at other “occupation” sites. How all of this will translate into public policy is a work in progress, as it should be, but first we need public forums like this to listen to each other. This current lack of specifics frustrates the mainstream media, and many leftists, too, but oh well. As one sign that someone had been holding said-- “We are not here for your entertainment.” One thing we don’t need is more worshiping at the shrine of a “free market” economy. We can no longer afford to live in a society where the terms of debate and public policy and daily work life are determined by those with too much money, too many comforts, too much privilege, and too little comprehension of the real world where we all live.
Today, October 5th, one good sign is the support of student and labor unions coming together, an alliance that has been sorely missing for far too long. And today I’m back home in a town still struggling to recover from massive floods last month. The powers that be in Congress even threatened FEMA funding rather than tax the rich.
This gathering has already won. People are listening to each other, acting together, meeting each others needs. The “bottom line” of corporate life has never been for everybody’s benefit. We need an economy that works for all of us and a way in the world where we’re not always killing people. We are learning how to make it easier to live so that we need not rob or kill. I hope this spreads.