What's your opinion of the "Occupy Wall St." movement?

[runonsentence]

Powerful photo essay from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-7-weeks-in/100183/

[Two Espressos]

Powerful photo essay from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlant...eeks-in/100183/

Thanks for the link!

[mandarin.orange]

Powerful photo essay from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlant...eeks-in/100183/

Thanks for posting. A picture is worth a thousand words, and as I looked through these, I couldn't help but be struck by a couple things: 1) London has more critical mass than I'd realized. Reading about it is one thing; seeing it is another. 2) I suspect we're going to see a huge shift from NYC to west coast movements picking up steam, namely Oakland. One could argue it's already underway.

[Agradatudent]

On the first day of the protests here, my bus was delayed. That's not how to make me join the cause.

[starmaker]

Man, I go away for a month and look what happens.

I've been acting as a medic for one of the larger Occupys for a little over a month, and visited two others (a large one and a small one). I am supportive, obviously. That doesn't mean that I agree with everything that everybody there says, because not all Occupiers agree with each other on everything! But what I see is an amazing platform for mobilizing people and raising the profile of certain issues. Activists from different groups who never knew about each other before are talking to each other. People who are new to political action are getting in touch with experienced people. We're holding all kinds of joint marches and rallies with existing community groups, raising their profiles in the process. We've had a voter registration booth, and another local Occupy group had an "Occupy the Polls" event on election day to re-elect a well-loved local elected official. People are discussing ideas. And suddenly the media is talking more about issues that we care about.

The people who think that it is nothing but a bunch of spoiled rich white kids trying to recreate the '60s are just factually wrong. Our camp is around 40% homeless people, and there's a significant faction of middle-aged and old people. Heck, most of the Safety guys are middle-aged blue collar townies who probably work manufacturing safety or something in their normal lives. Lots of people who live in the camp commute from there to their jobs. There's a lot of union members. There's a ton of veterans, young and old. I know that not all the Occupys are like that - another one that I visited (3000 miles away) was younger, whiter, and more full of hipsters - but my point is that the demographics aren't as homogeneous as people seem to think.

The Occupy protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. Even in Oakland, where for some reason nobody was talking about the peaceful protesters that were physically restraining the rogue violently-inclined ones and using their bodies to shield buildings from vandals.

The myth of disorganization has quickly become one of my pet peeves. People think that because there's no designated leaders, there's no structure at all. But at all the large Occupys there's a tremendous amount of role specialization. Like I said, I'm a medic, which is a role that I perform through our Medical/Health working group. We have a wide variety of other working groups, including Legal, Logistics, Food, Safety (makes sure that tents are set up safely, keeps the peace within the camp, etc), Media (which could be called PR), Winterization (this is the Northeast), Direct Action (plans the actual marches and rallies), Community Outreach (builds connections with other local groups), and Sanitation (collects the trash from each tent and makes sure that the camp doesn't get trashy and filthy). The infrastructure is quite extensive.

I think there's legitimate room for disagreement on the park issue. In our case, the city told us that we could use the (government-owned) park, but the non-profit that are stewards for the park has been complaining. This particular park takes up less than a block in a 1.5-mile stretch of parks and plazas. The next park in the sequence is literally 10 feet away. I am not too worried that people are being deprived of enjoying the lovely city parks because we're in a tiny bit of a huge stretch of them. I think that in general, Occupy camps should be careful that they aren't preventing local residents from being able to access parks, but most cities that I've been in have either very large parks or lots of small parks within easy walking distance of each other, and I personally - again, I can understand why some people might disagree - don't see why groups shouldn't be able to have long-term things like this on teeny-tiny fractions of city parkland (and yes, if the Tea Party people wanted to camp on a piece of park too, I see no problem with that - if we ever get to the point where enough groups want to do this that cities are running out of park, then we can figure out what to do about that).

I'd be happy to discuss some of my experiences of participating in an Occupy and spending a whole lot of time in an Occupy camp with any of you who are curious and refrain from going ad hominem on me.

[mandarin.orange]

I'd be happy to discuss some of my experiences of participating in an Occupy and spending a whole lot of time in an Occupy camp

An excellent post. Thanks for summarizing your first-hand experience; I enjoyed reading it. I've been excited to see Occupy move to college campuses. To all those who accuse the movement of having a garbled message: again, check out your local Occupy and educate yourself. On my campus, the message couldn't be clearer: we oppose 1) proposals for astronomical tuition hikes, and 2) the use of police force to suppress protests on other college campuses (e.g. UC Davis).

[mandarin.orange]

Definitely worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

[rising_star]

On the other hand, over the past 5 weeks we have people living in a public park. There have been numerous illegal actions including blocking traffic, blocking bridges, noise complaints, and public urination and defecation. They have also attacked the police and even police animals. They pay no rent and no taxes but have cost the city over 3 million dollars so far.

What really intrigues me is the selective enforcement by the police of the ordinances governing city parks. I actually did some research on this as a MA student so, I'm speaking here from the research I've done. Yes, almost all public city parks have ordinances that include park closure hours. The homeless, for example, are rarely evicted from the public parks they sleep in. If I were still doing that kind of research, I would definitely add a chapter or two to my thesis that relates to the selective enforcement of ordinances by law enforcement and city personnel.

The myth of disorganization has quickly become one of my pet peeves. People think that because there's no designated leaders, there's no structure at all. But at all the large Occupys there's a tremendous amount of role specialization.

So the reports saying that there are groups of leaders that meet, make decisions, and communicate with the media are incorrect?

I think there's legitimate room for disagreement on the park issue. In our case, the city told us that we could use the (government-owned) park, but the non-profit that are stewards for the park has been complaining.

Would you mind explaining this part a bit further? I'm curious as to why the non-profit stewards (I'm assuming it's a park conservancy in a public-private partnership with the municipal government) have been complaining and what, if anything, has been done to address their complaints.

[starmaker]

So the reports saying that there are groups of leaders that meet, make decisions, and communicate with the media are incorrect?

I would be willing to entertain the possibility that some Occupy camp, somewhere, decided to go against what everyone else is doing and has designated official leaders, but it's not any camp that I know about, and the movement in general is strongly against having designated leaders for the camps. It's also possible that some idiot decided to declare him/herself "the leader" without anybody knowing (in which case people will notice pretty quickly when the relevant article gets printed).

I suspect that these reports you're talking to are confusing official leadership roles with role specialization. At our Occupy, we have a Media working group. They write press releases/communicate with press, plan media strategy, manage the social media stuff, do some PR for the camp, keep track of what the press is saying about us, and so on. But they are still accountable to the camp as a whole, and expected to be transparent about what they are doing. Obviously, individuals also speak to the press (I've done so a few times), representing only themselves as individual protesters.

I heard that the OWS camp in NYC had shifted decision-making models a bit and I don't know the details on what they did, so I am speaking here about the more common model that we use. General decision-making is done through the General Assembly, which is guided by a facilitator. Anyone can come to a general assembly, speak, make proposals, and otherwise participate in the process. Decisions are made by consensus, which is a sort of modified voting that requires 75% for ratification. It is a bit complicated, but, IMO, not more so than Robert's Rules.

Working groups make decisions about their internal operations through their own meetings, most of which are publicly advertised (a few groups, like our Legal and Medical/Health, are less public about their meetings for the sake of the privacy of the people that they are serving). They can also bring proposals to the General Assembly (for example, if Medical/Health wants funds to buy stethoscopes, or Safety wants the camp to ratify a procedure for dealing with violent individuals, they can bring proposals to the GA).

Would you mind explaining this part a bit further? I'm curious as to why the non-profit stewards (I'm assuming it's a park conservancy in a public-private partnership with the municipal government) have been complaining and what, if anything, has been done to address their complaints.

The non-profit's complaints were pretty generic. It doesn't really help that they went behind our backs to the mayor with these complaints (the letter became public later).

They complained about possible health, safety, and sanitation issues. I believe that their complaints on this front are vastly overblown and based on stereotypes about what the camps are like rather than reality. We have active Medical/Health, Safety, and Sanitation working groups, and we had a major camp clean-up a week ago. We have been inspected by the city public health bureaucracy (and are subject to further inspections if they wish). Some local churches let people shower there, and we have personal hygiene supplies at the camp. Medical, of which I am a member, ran a free flu shot clinic in collaboration with a local public health clinic, where we vaccinated nearly 60 people. If they have something more concrete I wish they'd discuss it with us.

They complained that nobody else can use the park while we're on it. I would be more sympathetic to this if they weren't stewards of a 1.5-mile stretch of park and plaza land, of which we occupy less than a block. They said that they had to cancel a big public event - why not just use the section 10 feet away? It's the same subway stop and everything, and almost nobody ever seems to be on that patch. When they have hosted farmers' markets on the plaza that borders the camp, we have been supportive, encouraging people to buy things there via Twitter and buying things ourselves.

They also complained that the neighbors (this park is in the middle of the city's financial district; the neighbors are people who work at the various financial institutions around the area) are afraid to walk by because they fear aggressive confrontations. I have spent 150+ hours in this camp, and I have seen dozens of clean-cut people in suits walk by and through the camp with nobody paying them the slightest bit of attention. I am not sure what we can do about this short of posting signs everywhere that say "It's okay, we are not going to hurt you. No, really." We haven't harmed the random people who walk by or through (even the guy who went around the camp taunting people and claiming that we were all on welfare). Occasionally somebody on the sidewalk will try to hand out fliers for their pet cause or political philosophy, but that's about it.

So yeah. The GA selected a small delegation, accountable to the GA, to enter mediation with the non-profit and the city. Apparently it didn't go very well.

Disclaimer: I am speaking only for myself here, based on my own experiences and the research that I have done into other cities' camps. I am not speaking for Occupy, the Medical/Health working group, or my camp.