The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on in lower Manhattan, with activists camping out and marching around the financial district. They self-describe as:
Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.
Media coverage has been mixed. First, the protests were ignored. Then they were criticized. They’re increasingly being lauded. I have mixed feelings, personally, about some of the tactics and the lack of coherent goals and the protestors comparing themselves to the Arab Spring activists, even while I support the protests and I’m on board with their general grievances pertaining to the prioritization of corporations over people and a government that allows corporate greed to go unchecked while millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet. Like Samhita says over at Feministing, “You can say what you will about protests that are not strategic or focused and those are legitimate critiques – but the fundamental power of protesting when all other avenues have failed us is important to any semblance of democracy we might have, whether it be a strategic single issue protest or a faceless unanimous mass uprising. If protesters aren’t listened to, represented or covered, we have all but lost our voice.”
Regardless of how I feel about the relative merits of some aspects of Occupy Wall St. — and regardless of whether you think the protestors are reclaiming the future or are a bunch of hippie socialists — we should all be concerned with how the NYPD is handling the situation. The protests have been, by almost all accounts, peaceful, even if the protestors didn’t have a permit. The NYPD is nonetheless making mass arrests, using mace, and manhandling protestors. That kind of disproportionate response should scare all of us — especially when much of the media coverage has amounted to, “Well the protestors are a bunch of spoiled children anyway.”
Look at the pictures and tell me that seems right. Try to envision Tea Party activists or even abortion clinic protestors — two groups that routinely protest without permits, and with varying degrees of peacefulness — being maced, arrested en masse, violently thrown to the ground, or roughly dragged down the street.
It doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. And it shouldn’t happen to left-wing protestors in lower Manhattan, either.
A terrifying number of important rights and liberties have been curtailed in the United States over the past ten years, often under the guise of keeping us safe or fighting evil. For the most part, Americans have looked the other way. But when peaceful protests are met with violence, and when force is used to silence political grievances, we all lose. Protests and public assemblies are such fundamental parts of the American story that they’re protected in the Constitution. For centuries they’ve been a major avenue through which we’ve achieved social change, or at least voiced our opinions. No matter what our political positions or our feelings about any particular group of activists, it should give us pause when a peaceful protestor has to decide if speaking her mind — or just showing up — is worth getting maced, arrested and brutalized. In looking at the photos and reading the accounts of the actions taken against the Occupy Wall St protestors, even the most right-wing among us should be disturbed. We should all be angry.
I think those of us who see that the police response to Occupy Wall Street is disproportionate and wrong would do well to also be very mindful of asking why the response to this protest is so different from the trend of police responses to Tea Party or anti-choice protesters.
Tea Partiers and Occupy Wall Street protesters can be made to look similar: they’re both challenging the current financial role of government. But Tea Partiers, for all their noise and anti-establishment rhetoric, only help support the status quo of extreme capitalism and social hierarchy. Whatever they may individually want (and I think that is a question that bears asking), they are supporting a less collective/socialized, more privatized government system in an era when the government is becoming more privatized — and indeed, more tightly entangled with the private sector — daily. And anti-choice protesters, though they protest something that is actually legal, are likewise on the side of those in power (men) keeping it (by controlling women’s bodies). Their behavior may be disorderly, and even violent, but neither of these groups truly threaten those in power by being visible and audible.
Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, is a threat to corporatism, to increasingly concentrated wealth, to the creeping theft of rights and freedoms from the ordinary public — all current trends that help put more power into the hands of the already-powerful. Even if they were disorderly, a comparison with other disorderly protests suggests that incidental physical disorder is not the reason for the extremity of the police response to them. No, these people must be stopped because they dare to criticize the way the powerful stay in power. Because if they are successful, the powerful might actually lose something. And because even if they are merely heard, the silence they break is essential to keeping things the way they are.
In this context, I think calling the protesters “childish” or “unfocused” is not merely a harmless, dispassionate critique. Requiring protesters, who are by definition moved to an action that would not be necessary if quiet, mature, highly focused methods sufficed to get their needs addressed, is totally unfair in the face of the incredible power they are attempting to challenge. The injustices they are responding to are not focused: income and resource inequality touches every part of my life. Corporatism touches every part of my life. It is uncontrolled, it is rampant, it is irresponsible to anything but itself. I have my doubts as to whether such a grievance is capable of being voiced in a “focused” way.
And rhetoric about childishness and lack of control or focus ultimately justifies the imagined need for a violent police response. Childishness requires “adults” to step in and control the situation. “Lack of focus” suggests, again, the need for control. I may not be interested in participating, myself, in a certain forms of protests or certain iterations of them. But when we, who are aware of social justice issues, criticize activism for being unfocused, I think we need to ask why that is a problem. And who it is a problem for, and why the unfocused demands of some people are less important than the equally-uncontrolled interests of others. And finally, if we believe that unfocused protests are ineffective, why that is and whether we’re content to let it be.
Brigid, I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think lack of focus suggests the need for control. I think it’s a legitimate critique. One reason I’m not down there protesting is that I have no clear sense of what Occupy Wall Street actually stands for. And I’ve looked! I’ve tried to find out! But as far as I can tell, it’s a hodge-podge of liberal goals without any clear endgame. What would make the protest successful? What exactly is the protest trying to achieve? The answers vary from “revolution” (which, um, is not what I would really support) to “end capitalism” to “I dunno, we’ll figure it out later I guess.” For folks who would actually like to see a progressive shift in this country, that is a real problem, because it means that the protests aren’t particularly effective. I don’t think protestors have to be quiet, dispassionate, mature or highly focused, but I do think they need some sort of stated purpose and goal. You say, “if they are successful, the powerful might actually lose something.” My issue is that I don’t know what success would even look like for this protest. That’s a problem.
So…has anyone else read the comments of the BuzzFeed photos/article where some MRA jackass tries to make this about police brutalizing wifebeaters? Because it’s epic.
it’s a common problem on the left: by having a generally anti-authoritarian ethic, no one wants to dictate to another what they should or should not believe or how they should carry out a protest. having taken part in doing media strategy for some left causes in the past, i can tell you it’s not always easy to tell fellow activists that having similar talking points and staying on message will help get better media coverage — some will respond with a fatalistic “well the media will suck no matter what we say” or will just reject talking points out of hand because they don’t want to feel like they’re being forced to conform.
on the other hand, i don’t think the tea party movement is any better when it comes to having clear goals. “we want our country back” and “no big government” are pretty vague and also don’t give a sense of what victory would mean for them.
I think Chomsky’s endorsement is pretty clear about what, at least he thinks, the protests stand for.
Whether you buy that narrative is a different issue, but that seems to me the goal of the protests.
I would’ve expected that teabaggers would have gotten permits for their protests. The few instances I can find of them not having permits, they’ve cancelled their protests.
I’ve got to agree with Victoria about the Tea Party’s unclear goals. Largely because my workplace has several Tea Partiers – who asked for (and got) time off to go to a Tea Party rally here. The punch line? I work a public library.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Teas aren’t too clear on what they want.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Teas aren’t too clear on what they want.
But in all fairness, I don’t take them seriously either. :p
I do agree that the police response was disproportionate, both because they should not be macing and arresting peaceful protestors and also because I’m sort of amazed these protests are viewed as a threat to Wall Street or the establishment; if all the anger over the bailouts, etc. didn’t make a huge difference then I doubt a bunch of disorganized vaguely-but-strongly upset people will.
There is probably some ageism too — macing college kids is more acceptable to the public than macing grandma.
Wow, Lynnsey, that Peter Nolan trainwreck is… wow.
SHHHH!! If you say his name three times, he’ll appear!
Perhaps I’m naïve but I don’t believe the protests would have gotten this big is someone had sat down and come up with a 12 point plan people had to agree with before they could hold a sign in the street. I see this as an opening up. The people want a voice and they are demanding to be heard. They are demanding that the eyes and ears of our government, corporations, and people around the world truly acknowledge that there is a problem. Not just a “job” problem or a “greed” problem but an institutional problem. That’s what the people of Occupy Wall Street are saying. And, they are also demanding a dialogue. This is always the first step in a movement. A problem has to be acknowledged before we can go about changing it.
I just don’t know anymore what works and what doesn’t work. Protests like these are routinely ignored by the Mainstream Media unless they are sensational enough to count as “news”. But I still keep thinking about that Revolution that Will Not Be Televised.
The protests seem pretty focused to me. The initial impulse seems to be, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
The “Ok, what then?” part may be unclear. But the initial impulse seems pretty straightforward to me.
Jill, I agree that lack of focus, especially to the extent that “success” is undefined, is a problem and subject for legitimate critique. It just strikes me that even legitimate critique kind of plays into a mindset, for those who are inclined towards it, of needing to control “people like that.” Like, some of us have a discourse that includes critiquing this protest for being unfocused, and simultaneously some other people apparently have a discourse that includes arguments for violently controlling this protest, or at least excusing that violence. And I think we maybe should think about how these two messages might be connected or at least interact with each other.
I don’t mean to say that anyone who levels that critique is necessarily looking to control people. But I kind of did say that, so sorry.
I second Rachel’s sentiment. I also find the way they are organizing their “tent city” for lack of a better word, inspiring. Living communally, having dialogues, using consensus decision making, taking care of one another is an incredibly empowering experience and completely antithetical to “regular” society. I don’t think that aspect should be overlooked. The means are the ends, you know?
Wow, that was really fun!
I am all for peaceful protest, and certainly the current times call for a lot of it, but above all I wish more of my fellow progressives would fucking VOTE!
That said, I agree 100% with everything you said here, Jill. Thanks for articulating it so well.
If I hear another protester compare their lives to that of Jews during the Holocaust, I’m going to rip my hair out and rub my bloody scalp on their lap. I oscillate between being ridiculously angry that individuals think that’s an appropriate comparison to laughing hysterically.
The NYPD are being dickwads. No questions asked. But let’s agree in advance that they are not the Gestapo.
And in local elections, especially. This has been something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
@Brigid: It’s more complicated. If you know real tea partiers, they’re hardly for further entrenching the moneyed classes. They decry the same “corportism” that you do, especially Barack Obama’s cronyism and corruption, which is the worst we’ve seen in decades. Tea partiers want to reduce the state, and that includes the mesh between government and business. There are no firms to big to fail. Let markets decide. Think about it …
et.
According to the NTYimes:
These anti-globalization protests are indeed quite violent. The NYPD overreacted, but not for the reasons implied here. Anti-abortion protesters don’t really work b/c they’ve been subjected to unconstitutional first amendment restrictions too.
lol. Halliburton, my friend?
PrettyAmiable- Word.
What about In God We Trust Inc.?
It sounds like the start of a movement (I hope). So many changes should be made, how can the group be focused? Some people, such as myself, want changes we can’t quite imagine yet. But things are not right. When the richest keep two-thirds of their money and it was 10% in the ’50s, when corporations’ profits keep going up and more people are becoming jobless, yes, there are problems that need some radical change. We need some radical ideas and who’s talking about them?
If you think that without government intervention “markets” would decide rather than monopolistic/oligopolistic capitalists, I have some lovely oceanfront property in Arizona you might enjoy. Also, I might recommend a nice history refresher on the industrial revolution in the US and possibly a few econ courses…specifically ones that emphasize the assumptions of efficient markets.
With so many goals, I get that it would be difficult to pick one or two and just protest on those items, then move on to #s 3 and 4 for their next protest, etc.
But I’d still be clearer on (and more supportive of!) their overarching goals if I knew what the crap they are. Anyone here a group member/knows a group member who can enlighten us please?