{"id":10204,"date":"2018-11-07T09:55:29","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T17:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=10204"},"modified":"2018-11-07T09:55:29","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T17:55:29","slug":"assessing-occupy-from-quixotic-success-and-horizontal-style-to-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/11\/07\/assessing-occupy-from-quixotic-success-and-horizontal-style-to-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Assessing Occupy: From quixotic success and horizontal style to 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Greg Guma<\/a>\u00a0(vtdigger.org)<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Occupy<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In fall 2011 hundreds of protesters gathered for a General Assembly in City Hall Park. File photo by Greg Guma<\/p>\n

Author and \u201960s activist Todd Gitlin considers the Occupy movement that swept across the world in 2011 a \u201cqualified but real success.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was quixotic, he told a SRO crowd in the Sugar Maple Ballroom in the Davis Center at UVM on Thursday. \u201cAnd it worked.\u201d But success also pointed to problems, he added, and \u201cyou could also say it failed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing from material he has assembled in a new book, \u201cOccupy Nation,\u201d Gitlin traced the uprising\u2019s evolution thus far and assessed the prospects for what he labeled Occupy 2.0.<\/p>\n

Gitlin currently teaches journalism and sociology at Columbia University, but his credentials as a radical thinker date back to the early 1960s. As president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a leading activist group, he helped to organize the first national demonstration against the war in Vietnam and the first sit-in against apartheid in 1965 at the Chase Manhattan Bank.<\/p>\n

Since then he has written 15 books, with titles like \u201cThe Whole World Is Watching\u201d and \u201cThe Sixties.\u201d As an academic authority on contemporary social movements he balances tough criticism of the Right with equally serious questions about the tactics and tone of Left activism.<\/p>\n

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Todd Gitlin. Photo by David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During a one-hour lecture and follow-up question period, he called what happened in September 2011 an \u201ceruption,\u201d a \u201cmovement\u2019s beginning,\u201d and an attempt to reverse the long-term accumulation of power and wealth by the wealthiest 1 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one saw it coming,\u201d he said. But there were rumblings in advance and structural pre-conditions. One was a \u201cdivergence of wealth\u201d so great that the 400 richest Americans now have as much as 50 percent of the wealth.<\/p>\n

There were attempts to mobilize public discontent for years. However, \u201con Sept. 17, the flame caught,\u201d Gitlin said, referring to day an open call was issued to Occupy Wall Street, soon to be known as OWS or just Occupy. Anarchists and democratic activists with groups like Anonymous, A99 and US Day of Rage were among the first to join. According to David DeGraw, editor of the organizing site AmpedStatus.com, the unifying principle was, \u201cAnything you can do to rebel against the system of economic tyranny in a non-violent manner is welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a radical upheaval that mirrored the outrage and defiance of the conservative, anti-government Tea Party movement that preceded it. \u201cOccupy filled a moral and political space,\u201d argued Gitlin. But it did not focus on government. Instead, its primary targets were \u201cbanksters\u201d and corporate forces that had corrupted politics, crashed the economy, and increased the gap between rich and poor while enriching themselves.<\/p>\n

Gitlin noted that the emergence of the terms 99% and 1% as part of the popular lexicon assisted President Obama in labeling Mitt Romney as a plutocrat early in the presidential race. On the other hand, most Democrats handled the nascent movement \u201cgingerly,\u201d while core members expressed skepticism, if not hostility to the current electoral system.<\/p>\n

He defined Occupy as the first U.S. social movement in modern history \u201cto begin with the benefit of majority support for its main thrust.\u201d Early unions did not experience \u201cunadulterated\u201d support, he noted. Neither the civil rights nor women\u2019s movements were especially popular at the start, and the Vietnam War had 60 percent public support in the mid-1960s.<\/p>\n

At the core, however, the movement\u2019s identity was closely tied to its famously \u201chorizontal,\u201d cooperative style, most visible at General Assemblies. It expressed an \u201cintense existential affirmation of itself,\u201d Gitlin said, a desire to evolve a new way of life that emerged primarily in the form of encampments across the country.<\/p>\n

Gitlin followed the movement closely and conducted numerous interviews for his book. He reports that many activists were inspired by uprisings from Egypt and Tunisia to Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

In Vermont, a series of rallies and marches began about two weeks after the initial call. On Oct. 15, rallies were staged in several communities, drawing support from labor and politicians. At the end of the month, adopting a central strategy, about 50 people began an encampment in Burlington\u2019s City Hall Park.<\/p>\n

Over the next weeks, the movement\u2019s broad scope and \u201cleaderless\u201d approach made it difficult to sustain momentum. There were organizational problems and internal disagreements about process and tactics. However, Gitlin says that most encampments, fundamentally expressions of the constitutional right of assembly to redress grievances, were broken up \u2013 often violently \u2013 during a coordinated response by local officials across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right of assembly means more than speech,\u201d Gitlin asserted. It is \u201cthe collective right to reason together.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many Occupy supporters displayed a tendency to be \u201cphobic\u201d about cooptation and thought unions and moveon.org<\/a>\u00a0were political \u201cTrojan horses.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Burlington, the flashpoint came in November with the suicide of Joshua Pfenning, a 35-year-old homeless man, in a tent at the Burlington encampment. In response, Mayor Bob Kiss shut it down.<\/p>\n

Occupy transformed the political culture by combining 18th century democratic principles with 21st century methods, Gitlin concludes. As a result, the focus on debt and deficits that had been dominating political debate gave way to a discussion of wealth inequality.<\/p>\n

But the core of the movement wanted more. \u201cThey wanted to produce a society of their own, and half believed they were producing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year later, Gitlin estimates that Occupy still has a core membership in the tens of thousands, \u201clargely young and dis-embedded.\u201d He compared it to the wing of the civil rights movement that was prepared to engage in civil disobedience.<\/p>\n

He also pointed to promising spinoffs like a Jubilee movement to cancel debt and an anti-foreclosure campaign, but he wasn\u2019t certain whether Occupy itself will have staying power.<\/p>\n

For some form of Occupy 2.0 to emerge as a \u201cfull spectrum movement,\u201d he advised that it will have to expand the appeal beyond \u201cthose who want direct democracy.\u201d He called its focus on encampments \u201cinspiring but self-limiting,\u201d and argued that it \u201ccan\u2019t be run horizontally.\u201d<\/p>\n

One strategy he recommended was to seek broad agreement on a popular \u201ccharter,\u201d a list of basic, achievable goals. The formal presentation concluded with his own seven point list, including progressive taxation, separating commercial from investment banks, a living wage, and reduced military spending.<\/p>\n

A next phase for Occupy, whether it\u2019s 2.0 or takes another name, certainly remains possible, Gitling says. But up to this point the upheaval has been \u201cmore notional than actual.\u201d<\/p>\n

The basic problem is that \u201cthere aren\u2019t enough saints.\u201d It\u2019s a predicament, he adds, but there is little potential in trying to convince people committed to the prophetic vision of a radically democratic society to simply give it up.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he said, \u201cit\u2019s going to be a weird movement if it\u2019s restricted to people who can show up for general assemblies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Greg Guma\u00a0(vtdigger.org) Nov 30 2012\u00a0 In fall 2011 hundreds of protesters gathered for a General Assembly in City Hall Park. File photo by Greg Guma Author and \u201960s activist Todd Gitlin considers the Occupy movement that swept across the world in 2011 a \u201cqualified but real success.\u201d It was quixotic,… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10205,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10204\/revisions\/10205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}