Event Recap

The third session of the Flying Seminar offered an opportunity to deliberate possibilities for the next phase of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Bill Zimmerman, a self-described veteran troublemaker, gave an account of his many experiences with progressive actions in the United States. Not unlike the two earlier sessions, in which OWS members compared notes with Polish and Japanese troublemakers, the current activists were able to compare and contrast their knowledge and their ideas with yet another out-of-the-box thinker.

Bill Zimmerman was in New York City to give talks and promote his book, a memoir that recounts a history of American political activism starting in the 1960s through Zimmerman’s personal experiences.

When it comes to organizing people, Zimmerman opened a box full of tactics that he and his fellow activists have used over the years to spur and demand change. He started off with letting us in on a lesson he learned early on. After having been active in increasingly militant protests against the Vietnam War, he realized that this kind of activism did not resonate with the public. The movement was forced to reconnect with people or otherwise lose its essential support. As it turned out, Americans responded to the call for humanitarian aid and Zimmerman was able to organize the international charity Medical Aid for Indochina, which brought humanitarian relief from American citizens beyond enemy lines. This prompted a serious discussion about the need to connect and stay connected with ‘your audience’ and how to get people who are sympathetic to a cause to participate.

Inevitably, this also brought back the more strategic question of wanting to work within the current capitalist system or striving for an alternative scenario through a systemic social-economic change. Most discussants were in favor of the use of creative instruments within our current system. Of course, Zimmerman’s experience lies exactly there. He was active in electoral campaigns, organized populist movements, produced political commercials, and worked on ballot initiatives, an instrument of direct democracy that is allowed in 23 states. As Jan Gross put it, “The framework is not your adversary, it can be filled with friendly initiatives.”

The systemic question reminded those around the table of a breakpoint for the movement of the 1960s: the decision to either live the change or organize the public to make change. Those who lived the change were able to influence values and styles. And this was another point of recognition for the OWS activists, whose disappointment with many of our current values has drawn them towards wanting to live the change, as exemplified by the camp in Zucotti Park and the many other public spaces in the US and abroad. They wonder, “How do we want to live, how do we want to treat each other?”

The accomplishments that OWS has made so far were lauded. The movement’s slogan of the 99% and the 1% has truly resonated with the public. There was agreement that OWS has given a spark for a new narrative and that a new language and rhetoric is needed.

Many questions were touched upon, although remained open: if this is the time for a third party movement, if large-scale boycotts are a useful instrument, what specific practical demands resonate with people and how to get people to participate – issues of students loans, underwater housing, and education in general were discussed as potential areas for demands. Instead of ending on tactics, Zimmerman emphasized the importance of organization. He strongly believes that people can empower themselves through organizing. For him, it all-important to reveal to people that they have power, can express that power and have control to set new relations. But the burden to organize should not only lie on OWS: “non-OWS needs to take more responsibility.”