In early October a “Think Tank” sprung up in Occupied Zuccotti Park – Liberty Square. This wasn’t the average think tank; there were no wealthy private donors, no agenda driven research topics, and not a cushy chair or mahogany desk to be found. We had a blanket and eventually a carpet, some signage that we’d rummaged up from stray things left about in the park, and a small space that had to be reclaimed/cleared and cleaned every day for our 12pm start. This was nothing like the pristine halls of the Brookings Institute.

What we did have, though, were ideas and a seemingly endless number of people excited about them. Random passers-by, stalwarts of the occupation, lunchtime bankers, after-work social workers, they were all present, and all had a voice. We talked about race relations, corporate personhood, OWS finances, whether this new world of Liberty Park could ever be anything but a microcosm of the larger society as a whole. Anything was up for discussion, and there was always something to talk about, something to listen to, and always a way to feel engaged in the new revolutionary dialog that had been sprouting up all over the country and world.

Unlike a typical think tank, the People’s Think Tank became an institution organically. We didn’t sign a corporate charter, file any legal registration papers with the state, or even hire any academics (they came organically as well). We handed in a piece of paper with our email addresses on it, a paragraph about what our working group would be, and just simply sat back and let the energy of the people involved in the occupy movement take us wherever it did. It didn’t take long before the Think Tank was a fixture in the park, a place where many were introduced to Occupy, its topics, and its horizontal discussions, dialog, and discourse.

The Think Tank has changed mightily today. It is no longer fixated on the park. We no longer meet every day for six hours either. The movement has changed gears, changed its mechanisms. The working groups are the apparatus that many things are getting done through now: direct action, occupy the SEC, the outreach cluster, pop-up occupy town squares, teach-ins. And after all, the Think Tank really is about dialog and horizontal dialog at that, something easy enough to replicate amongst occupiers. While the Think Tank is becoming more involved in the needs of the internal groups within Occupy Wall Street, it seems very clear that the future of the Think Tank is in outreach – just as the future of the movement itself seems to be.

Who are we?

Occupy is a global movement, synonymous with a certain type of social, political, and economic discourse much bigger than the “hallowed” walls of Wall St. Groups within the movement’s many occupations have formed to work on the movement’s dialog, hone its discourse, and communicate with each other as well as community based organizations and communities themselves. The Think Tank has been working to become more intertwined within this network as well. The core group of organizers within the Think Tank have themselves been branching out into other working groups and other occupy related endeavors. This seems to be the pattern of the movement right now. As its landscape changes, so too do its avenues of discourse and action.

The Think Tank has cut down to two scheduling times every week for topical think tanks (see NYCGA.net for current schedule). This means our time has been freed up to work on expanding the process of dialog outside of lower Manhattan and to work more in concert with OWS’ other outreach actions. We have a steady Think Tank working with the Queens General assembly, and have worked with a community partner, Urban Rebuilding Initiative (URI), on setting up regular Think Tanks in the Bronx. In New York City we have done mobile Think Tanks in Times Square, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Staten Island ferry terminal among others, and are working to continue being a fixture at as many occupy events as we can, such as the pop-up Town Squares,  the City-Wide Assembly, and May Day. We have also been to Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and even had a Think Tank in Cairo. We are working with multiple occupies to help them set up their own discussion forums: Poughkeepsie, Harvard, Boston, Santa Fe, Washington DC, Oakland, etc. We are looking into radio, TV, and multiple online platforms. We want to capture the essence of what the Think Tank was in the park, and continues to be – an entry point into the ideas and discourse of Occupy.

Perhaps some day the Think Tank will produce actionable policy options, it is for now, really a platform for bringing together voices not usually heard – especially not heard in the same spaces. A white construction worker from Brooklyn, an African-American lawyer from Wall St., a Latino restaurant worker from Queens, a retired veteran from Staten Island, a college student from Indiana, all sitting in the same place, taking about issues relevant to our times. All these conversations are recorded and archived at NYU’s Tamiment Library Labor Archives, and starting to find their way onto the Think Tank’s new website occupythinktank.org.

The beauty of this working group is that it is just one of many doing the same things. Virtually every working group is doing the same things. They are all working to expand their and our reach. There are groups spending weekends in East Flatbush, Brooklyn going door to door, listening to neighborhood concerns and trying to bring people together. The Facilitation Working Group is working with General Assemblies through the city and country to help facilitate meetings and assemblies. The list goes on.

This has been the direction of the movement over the last few months – quiet expansion. While the mainstream media would have had us withering away into the ethernet, what we’re really doing is settling in for the long arduous process of social change. The activists and mechanisms of Occupy are finding stable ways to produce continued and sustained efforts, to hone our mechanisms and messages, and to plan events and outreach that will bring in new people both in person and in spirit. It could be argued that the most powerful weapon in the world is thought. And that – to me – is what Occupy is: the thought that another world is possible.

The other day someone working for the mainstream media (MSM) seemed to be undecided about how exactly they should disparage a burgeoning movement. First the hypertext link on MSNBC’s website read, “Protesters want to tame Wall Street’s wild ways, but they’re a little wild themselves.” Later in the day it read, “Wall Street protesters spread murky message.” In both cases, clicking on the link would reveal the title of the article, “Familiar refrain: Wall Street protest lacks leaders, clear message,” with the opening lines, “It’s messy. It’s disorganized. At times, the message is all but incoherent.” With the accompanying photos focusing on the disheveled belongings of the protesters scattered about their home base, Liberty Park, the theme was that the seeming lack of organization and consensus of the “Wall Street Protesters” was analogous to the dysfunctional state of American political discourse. Being unsympathetic, skeptical, or even cynical, reporters do find what they’re looking for. Yet such a jaundiced look at the protests, as is typical of much of the media’s coverage, misses something strikingly obvious: what has largely faded in the rest of the country is still alive in Liberty Park– hope and change.

Last week, a young couple from Virginia Beach paid a visit to the park with their two children, one about five or six years old, the other not older than three. They met a young man who was writing a message on a cardboard to protest corporate malfeasance. The couple asked him to explain to their eldest daughter what it was he was protesting about. The young man smiled, and looked at the girl, who shyly averted his glance.  “So basically, a few people have a lot of power, and they’re using that power to take advantage of everybody else.” At that point, the girl began to give the young man her undivided attention.  “You know, it’s like a bully, we’ve all had plenty of bullies in our lives, and they think of different ways to better their position. And what we have is just that, on a larger scale, going on with the ruling class.” He paused and smiled as the girl’s attention seemed to be waning and then sped up his voice as he finished his explanation, at that point perhaps addressing her parents more than her: “And they’re using the socio-economic infra-structure of this company [sic.]to do that.” The girl’s eyes wandered about the park. Still smiling, and probably in jest, the young man adds, “She looks like she totally got it.”

I cannot say that a description such as this necessarily typifies the movement. If I wanted to emulate the MSM, I would say that the vignette was the protest in a tea cup: the girl being the uncomprehending MSM, not ready or willing to receive a message, which is actually being delivered loud and clear. However, the protest is certainly more than the sum of its parts. A closer look reveals that the lack of hierarchy and permanent leadership does not denote disorganization. (In this way, it resembles the protests in North Africa and the Middle East, including Israel.) A lack of a single unified message does not indicate no message at all. The movement is a work in progress; leadership, structure, and consensus are emerging from the bottom up.

The movement has already formed a number of committees which address the needs of the protesters; one of the most recent is a “Let’s Talk it Out Committee” which has the goal of providing counsel for those protesters that are mentally or emotionally stressed. There are also working groups that address concerns such as medical care, sanitation, and community outreach. Then there is the “General Assembly,” a kind of “free-market” of ideas if you will, which has definite procedural rules, and consists of anyone who wishes to have their voice heard. In fact, even one of its most disorganized aspects, its online Chat Room, has rather strict rules: no ideology or political candidates are to become the topic of discussion. The participants want the movement to grow, and realize that in order for that to happen, the movement must be inclusive and without ideological rigidity. Even the police are considered part of “the 99%,” which perhaps more than anything else, is representative of their message: if you make under $250,000 a year and feel your representatives have been bought by elite interests, we are you.

On the sidewalk near Broadway is the “Welcoming Committee.” A few nights ago, I talked to a young women, wearing a shirt that said “I’m here because I love this country,” that had been camping out in the park 24/7. She complained that a local news outlet claimed that the numbers of protesters was “dwindling,” but she was happy to report that they were actually increasing, and that that morning she had woken up surrounded by several hundred others. When I asked her what she thought about the criticism that they are “leaderless,” she told me that when numbers are large there will naturally need to be leaders, but the structure of the movement was “organic” and different leaders took the reins in different situations.

Recently, Cornel West briefly took the reins of leadership, and addressed the General Assembly before they began their discussion.  “There is a sweet spirit in this place,” he began, but stopped as the rest of the assembly repeated his words, as is the procedure when someone addresses them.  “I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…” Again the refrain.  “… as those strong and everyday people…” This time the crowd isn’t so sure about what was said,  and a little laughter can be heard before the crowd tries to repeat what West said, but all that is clear is “everyday people.” West continued, “…take a stand with great courage and passion.

The rest of his speech, minus the refrains, went like this:

“Because we oppose the greed of Wall Street oligarchs, and corporate plutocrats, we free the democratic juices of this country and all the places around the world. I am so blessed to be a part of this. You had me spiritually break dancing all the way here.  Cause when you bring folks together, people of all colors, and all cultures, all genders, all sexual orientations, the elite will tremble in their boots.  And we will send the message, that this is the US fold, responding to the Arab Spring.  And it’s going to hit Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Arizona, and then on to Detroit. To Appalachia, and to people on reservations for our red brothers and sisters. Martin Luther King Junior will smile from the grave as we move step by step to what he called a revolution- don’t be afraid to say revolution- a transfer of power from the oligarchs to ordinary citizens, for the poor children of all colors, the orphans and the widows, the elderly, and the working folk. We can end the prisoner-industrial complex, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street Oligarchy complex, the corporate media multiplex. I want to thank you.  It’s a blessing to be a small part of this magnificent gathering. This is the General Assembly consecrated by your witness and your body and your mind.”

The refrain this time is drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

He left and then someone else briefly took the reign of leadership, but with the disclaimer, “Just because there are facilitators, doesn’t mean that they are leaders. We’re in this together, we want to work it out.”

The idea is that the people should lead. In Liberty Park that idea has actually become reality.