OWS at Six Months: Reflections on the Winter Occupation

Occupy’s six-month birthday celebration last Saturday at Zuccotti Park was first spent in celebration: the scene was joyous with friends reuniting after winter hibernation. “Spring training” regimes were conducted. The drum circle was back, and mic checks once again created a collective voice.

But when protestors undertook a spontaneous, albeit brief, reoccupation, they were met with the most violent and unrestrained NYC police force to date. MTA buses were commandeered and over seventy arrests were made. The significance and power of the park was clear once again.

Police violence was immediately challenged with solidarity marches in New York and throughout the country on Sunday. In spite of a winter predicting our demise, Occupy is alive again this spring. Not that we were ever really dead, but since the cops evicted Zuccotti the first time last fall, OWS has been struggling to find a way of staying meaningful without the spectacle of the park. Liberty Park offered a sense of commonality, a point of access, and a feeling of empowerment that has been difficult to replicate.

In fact, as the winter approached, the occupation had already started to weaken. Social problems appeared within the park. The influx of those bearing the stigmas of long-term homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness had already created divisions, cutting across the usual lines of class, race and “mental status.” Neighborhoods and maps developed to segregate social groups, restricting movement within what was established and claimed as a space of “openness.” Just after the fall storm, a woman pushed past me rushing from one side of the park to the other, and I heard her say to a friend, “Oh noooo, we don’t want to get caught in that part of the ‘hood.’ ” That comment stuck.

Many of us felt relieved that the police closed the park – that the occupation went out with a bang, rather than slowly disintegrating in front of an increasingly disinterested television audience, suggesting the movement’s ideals as being fundamentally in conflict to the wider public.

Nonetheless, the movement did continue. The loss of the park meant that all activities became based in working groups. We moved inside to 60 Wall Street, but the conditions were less than ideal – especially once they shut off the heat and locked the “public” restrooms. By mid January, the numbers of attendees at the popular Empowerment and Education meetings had diminished to the point that the loss of our status as a working group was threatened. Participants, seemingly seeking social relationships more than social goals, easily disrupted meetings. The Occupy Student Debt Campaign spent hours dialoguing with the Mediation Working Group in hope of resolving an internal conflict that led to a member being asked to “step back.” Euphemisms aside, it turned more into “step out,” and I’ve never seen this person again. In spite of the challenge of moving forward with this member, the fallout of the conflict seemed equally difficult.

Some active members believed that openness was primary. We needed to relearn how to interrelate with people, undermining a key value would be counterproductive and not very OWS. Other, equally active, members believed that complete openness was impossible, and worse, an illusion. Those uncomfortable in certain environments would naturally self-select to leave, and those comfortable with restrictions on rejection would always find a way to run the show by refusing to conform. For many of us openness in practice could be a lose-lose proposition, in spite of the fact that it had all the appeal of a winning ideal. After all, we are the 99%.

It seemed that the majority of working groups were actively grappling with these questions throughout the winter. Conversations had turned to community agreements, step up/step back, authority and horizontality. The focus had shifted off of the corporate take over of our democracy, unsustainable inequality and the nefarious activities of the big banks. Increasingly, it seemed as if we were engaged in an impossible struggle over the meaning and conditions of one of the fundamental premises of OWS – namely that radical openness is both possible and desirable.

Many of us felt that the principle needed revision. Prefiguring a society of total openness seemed to deny the current existence of many very real problems that our actions toward social change were attempting to address. Prefiguring a future society often seemed incompatible with taking action toward creating a new one.

Were we hypocrites? Was this an admission of a certain kind of defeat?  And, if in theory there’s no way to think outside of capitalism, and if our conception of openness is restricted by capitalism, then why on earth have we been spending so much time talking? Many of us were becoming increasingly frustrated by endless talk, and wanted to get down to some action.

By way of compromise, Occupy University meetings were divided:  two hours for talk that had no specific purpose, but could be purposeful nonetheless, and two hours for talk that had ends in mind. What could not be resolved by conversation was ultimately resolved through attrition, as members simply drifted, and the people who simply had the wherewithal to keep showing up ended with a the consensus. Is this really openness? It felt like the best we could hope for, so we carried on, sensing that our struggle might be more important than anything we created in the end.

In many ways the distraction of the Battle of Oakland came as a welcome relief. But once a proposed solidarity statement was circulated stating support for a “diversity of tactics” strategy, the Battle of Oakland seemed to expose a new problem with openness as practiced. Many of us believed that OWS was fundamentally a non-violent movement, and even with all this talk of openness, it came as a shock that it might not be possible to denounce violence without compromising this ideal. If we’re open, then we must be open to a “diversity of tactics.” But what about the idea that if we’re open, we cannot be open to violence, since it’s the ultimate way of closing everything down? But violence comes in many forms – it can be economic and psychological; why should we focus on the form of violence used by the victims of economic violence? Maybe some of that’s true as a matter of metaphor, but as a matter of definition, violence is physical. But that’s only because of who gets to define. Such was the conversation, and it became clear that many activists would leave the movement if violence were denounced. It was equally clear, however, that many would leave if non-violence were not practiced.

The conversation continued at The Winter of our Discontent event sponsored by The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and The New School. Former SDS member and New School Liberal Studies Department Chair, Jim Miller, came out of the gate by challenging the panel to take a stand against violence. But instead, David Graeber, the admired intellectual hero of the movement, disclosed his own involvement with black blocs. But, I wonder if it will be David Graeber or the young black kid brave enough to participate in a march, who will be the one to do time?

What sort of openness are we really talking about? Here, class and race intersect, but end up in the pile of other easily brushed off accusations that OWS is elitist, just another version of the same old thing, a different form of special interest, and not really the 99%. When a young woman took the mic and challenged the ideology of the 99%, arguing that compassion is also needed for the 1%, as they are equally held hostage to capitalism, the audience laughed and many of the panelists who were just espousing openness scoffed. Radical openness? Not so much. Personally, I’m okay with that. Sometimes, ideas are incompatible with each other, and there’s almost always a gray zone. For me, openness seems to be an ideal that can serve different masters. Are there any ideals that automatically create freer or more equal or better material conditions in any real way?

In spite of what seems to be an ideological impasse, a sizable group of us have continued to work on projects and build important ties. For us, the problems that OWS addresses are multifaceted, sometimes indescribable, but completely necessary. For us, continuing to grapple with inconsistencies is the path toward a truly democratic society. Fundamentally, we believe that people do have power. Call us idealists, but we believe that a better world is within our grasp. Our evidence is that Occupy Wall Street has already changed the national discourse on inequality, foreclosures, student debt and democracy. Our evidence is that the movement has remained non-violent and the + Brigade emerged out of the “diversity of tactics” crisis. Occupy University has launched our first course: Studying May Day and the General Strike, and Occupy Student Debt Campaign is organizing a national day of action on April 25^th.  Surely, issues around openness will continue to arise.

Now that spring has arrived, the movement seems stronger than ever.  It seems likely that the issues around openness will be addressed in practice, as we collectively envision and challenge our future.