Of all the things that piss me off about OWS, what's probably the worst is this: our corporate media have somehow foisted some kind of collective amnesia on us. People ask, "Ugh, I hate our financial sector, and OWS had some good rhetoric but they just gave up because they were cold, lazy, and bored." As if one of the biggest domestic displays of government violence in recent times didn't even happen!
There are plenty of other critiques of OWS that I embrace wholeheartedly--sites became gathering points for the homeless and hurt more widespread appeal, new people who went in were not on-boarded effectively--which we can debate on end. But the idea that one day people just got bored and gave up... that drives me nuts.
They were arrested, infiltrated, and attacked at multiple locations, over many months. They keep coming back, too, but that doesn't make the news. Right now, they're doing this thing called the Rolling Jubilee.
Also, hundreds of local OWS support protests and encampments happened, and they got raided, pepper sprayed, etc. just like NYC. Many of them are also persisting and fighting. One such group is Occupy Fights Foreclosures, which fights illegal foreclosures.
What is destroying the OWS image is the media, which actively ignores OWS. For some reason, they'll give a dozen TEA party people news coverage, but a larger (but still small) OWS protest doesn't get reporters.
The occupy movement was really just a long running protest. There where similar things going on in DC but they where hardly occupying wall street and they all got forcibly disbanded.
I'm just suggesting we keep some perspective. Civil rights succeeded despite dogs and firehoses. I thought OWS was going in a potent direction after Sandy, but apparently once they lost access to a private park, a fatal blow had been struck.
Well, yes and no. OWS was indeed shut down by municipalities using tough and even exceptional tactics, but the fact that it could be was a sign of deeper problems.
I think it's important to keep in mind the distinctions between broader social moods, specific organizations, and tactics, all of which together make up a social movement.
The American Civil Rights movement is an interesting comparison point, because it's a social movement that met with some success and is pretty well-known. It had organizations like SNCC and the SCLC that organically grew from a broader social base--the burgeoning black middle class, well-educated liberal whites--that gave it staying power. And it was able to rationally coordinate specific tactics that went beyond pushing legal briefs and went toward crystallizing specific instances of the injustices of the South. To make a retronym, it could Occupy the front section in public buses and seats at restaurants. And the power of those actions is that it would force governments to either react against them, revealing the profound violence involved in the system, or show that the government was unwilling to enforce its laws, which would effectively repeal them. (This is all very stylized, of course.) And individual tactics could and did coalesce into an organizational strategy, which is the key point.
How does OWS compare? You definitely have the discontent and the social base for it. And you have the tactics. God, you have more tactics than you can count. New forms of government, a bold attempt to force governments to instantiate violence by throwing your bodies in an area you'd live in and occupy, crews of people who, in a matter of weeks, managed to construct some level of waste management and food provision.
But, if you remove the people from the area they've Occupied... all those tactics fall apart. If you pull out that keystone, the whole logic of it crumbles. And then all you are left with is the original generalized discontent.
I think it would be very fair to lay the blame for that at Occupy's doorstep, if Occupy had a doorstep. Building a movement out of a tactic and social malaise leaves you vulnerable to the fact that as soon as anyone finds a way to respond to the tactic, the movement dies on the vine.
Also, for people who are skeptical that any organizations are capable of being effective in today's world, I'd suggest you look toward the immigration organizations (who have organized marches on DC several orders of magnitude larger than the NYC Occupy to less media acclaim) and managed to put it on an agenda, as well as to a lesser extent 350.org which is focused on climate justice.
Now imagine how difficult it is to wake up every morning and throw yourself into that all over again, particularly once you've been dispersed and have lost the tactical advantage of being garrisoned together in one space. The most hardcore people I know became afraid to go back into that, as were veterans of war.
It is inevitable that the moment ruptured (as it was for the globalization, biotech, and war moments before this). However, I think this Zizek speech at OWS captures the value of that inevitability really well:
Is Occupy Oakland comparable, directly, to the Zucotti Park protesters of OWS? As I understand it, from friends who live in Oakland, the Occupy Oakland protests were marked by violence and vandalism; they broke glass windows, threw bricks, and destroyed ATMs.
I read that start to finish, since I'll generally read anything you tell me to, and the conclusion I drew from it is that if that piece is representative of your feelings about direct action violence (or "violence"), it's probably best you & I don't talk about the morality of violence.
But that aside: I didn't ask the question because I wanted to condem Occupy Oakland.
I asked because the thread started with the suppression of the assiduously nonviolent (or "nonviolent") Zucotti Park protests.
But if our friends in Oakland are reporting those protests accurately, there was little chance of the Oakland protests not meeting a violent police response; Occupy Oakland was breaking windows, throwing bricks, destroying ATMs, and assaulting residents.
There were instances of property destruction (but not assaulting residents?) at actions organized as OO, but not at Oscar Grant Park, where the evictions happened. It's not as if the evictions were a situation where police were "responding" to property destruction.
Occupations across the country and the world met similar evictions through the use of force, although the use of tear gas specifically has been rare in the US.
If there was any qualitative difference in the police response, I think it has more to do with the character of OPD than the character of OO. The same thing happened at the port of oakland occupation in 2003 (where there was zero property destruction), which was equally brutal: https://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-07.htm
First off Occupy Wall street was in the short term moderately successful considering it's ambiguous goals and moderate funding.(1) What 'killed' it the fact it lasted for months and people just started ignoring it. The simple truth is sitting around in parks is something homeless people do and as a protest it's just inflectional. As to dogs, well people with guns and riot gear showed up and said leave and don't come back, there is only so much you can occupy at that point. You can come back, but so do the people with guns and after a while that process will break most people.
(1) There are some pieces of legislation that where influenced by the occupy movement. But, it the impact was more a demonstration of an actual grass roots organisation demonstrating that people where unhappy. A few of of those organisations are still around they just don't get the same sort of press.
Anyway, compared to the environmental movement (aka stop killing people) or the civil rights movement saying bankers are fucking us over only get's so much play.
PS: Also, there where a lot of parks being occupied. However, the one in New York had a lot of symbolic value.
There are plenty of other critiques of OWS that I embrace wholeheartedly--sites became gathering points for the homeless and hurt more widespread appeal, new people who went in were not on-boarded effectively--which we can debate on end. But the idea that one day people just got bored and gave up... that drives me nuts.