Liberals, Leftists & Occupy Wall Street

It seems safe to say that we've moved into a cultural/political space where liberals have jettisoned their early discomfort with Occupy Wall Street and now back the movement unreservedly. Sam Graham-Felsen's first person piece on overcoming OWS skepticism is a good example. Liberals have a weird and transactional relationship with leftists: we condescend to them, we fear they jeopardize the liberal project, we reject their agenda, and yet we occasionally use one another. I no longer know where Occupy Wall Street is on the liberal/leftist spectrum: I suspect, like Sam wrote, it wouldn't exist without the leftists but is now a movement of liberals and less-political folk who express their anxieties over economic dislocation. 

Even so, sometimes it takes people rather familiar with leftism to most accurately capture OWS. My old friend Colin Asher, writing in the Progressive, is a good example. You should read his whole piece, but I want to call attention to two excerpts. First Colin talks with a P.R. firm's chief, who's hanging around Zuccotti Park:

Does he think the group's lack of cohesion is a problem?

“It's charming, in it's own way,” he says.

“As a PR person, one thing I'd say is they need better messaging. “They're not bumper-sticker-ready yet.”

I can't argue with that. But for reasons I can't articulate, it seems to be completely beside the point.

I think this is totally right. Not having a coherent message can be a strength. It doesn't alienate anyone. That's why "We Are The 99 Percent" is so powerful a declaratory statement. And anyone paying attention to OWS or attending one of the rallies worldwide intuitively understands its actual, substantive message: we are anxious about economic dislocation, and we demand an end to it. There may or may not be a good way to programmatize that angst and craft an agenda to end it, but that's not usually the job of demonstations. 

Ah, but Colin, a rigorous thinker and reporter, wouldn't raise an issue like that and fail to problematize it:

 Zuccotti Park has become a panopticon. When any voice rises above a conversational level, microphones circle and descend like buzzards, flashes snap, and cell phones are raised and set to record. Reporters, academics, and writers shoulder through the crowd in search of “gets.” We approach each other, spot notebooks half-opened and held low to avoid attention, and withdraw. Interviewing has never felt quite so useless.

Fractional groups of Trotskyists, Maoists and Socialists have been nibbling at the edges of the Park since the occupation began, but now they are here en mass. A nervous, bearded man with unsteady hands reads from a hand-written note, explaining his reasons for coming to Zuccotti. I arrive as he is saying, “I just wanted you to know I'm here to stand for something.”

And this is where someone's familiarity with various protest movements shines through. I don't know what it's like to have a demonstration hijacked. Colin can teach people like me a few things. One of my 20-something cousins, who has a similar background and is no liberal, made this the heart of his critique of OWS: no one speaks for it, so it's setting itself up for hijacking, and risks styming its own growth.

I suppose it depends on how long OWS and its offshoots can physically stay in Zuccotti Parks around the country (and the world). If the movement disperses without evolving into a second phase, then its momentum probably will be squandered. I don't know the answer, but I know enough not to dismiss my friends with experience in these sorts of endeavors. 

Comments

[Colin Asher]

Great post, Spence. I don't think we have any real points of disagreement here.

One small thing: The more time I spent down at Zuccotti Park, the more apparent it became to me that the meaning of the events would not be found onsite. All of the journalists scrutinizing the movements of the crowd and the statements of participants (I include myself here) were really missing the point. I tried to get at that point in the article, but I'm not sure I succeeded.

The ultimate import of the Occupy events will be decided in the broader polity. And the winner (if I can use that word) will be the group that can best wield the occupations as a political totem in service of whatever goals they are pursuing. My Hooverville analogy isn't perfect, but this is where I think it has some utility. Hoovervilles were not themselves political movements, but political movements were able to point to them as evidence that capitalism was failing. Whether a particular camp was well organized or dysfunctional hardly mattered (except to the people living there, of course).

If I'm right about that...the 'hijacking' of Zuccotti park hardly matters. I find the RCP folks to be personally distasteful, but they, like me while I was down there, were probably coming at the this thing the wrong way. If they get twenty converts out of their efforts that will hardly matter in the final reckoning.

[mikey]

2 points. First, I find this ongoing question of OWS goals and demands to be either intentionally obtuse or utterly tin-eared. The message is clear - almost everybody in the country has first hand experience with economic injustice. We can feel the inequality, we understand the message clearly, we don't need 'bumper stickers'. We're living in the nightmare.

But what about DEMANDS? That's the other point. Why make demands - inherent in the protests themselves is the point that we're powerless - that we've lost faith in our ability to change things through the ballot box, that the political system and the economic system have been corrupted and co-opted to serve only the wealthy and powerful, and then have been hardened to prevent the unwashed masses from trying to restore justice or balance. Until government is willing to take the (acknowledgedly large) political risk of challenging the toxic status quo, demands or proposed solutions would be pointless. At this point it's enough to make people everywhere think about their experience over the last couple decades, and their perception of the system of governance and it's availability to them, and arrive at some profound conclusions on their own...

[fuster]

another great Spencer liked to say "If you don't stand up for something, you'll fall for anything."