Occupy Wall Street Protests: A 'Change of Conscience’

As protests spread to new cities, unions get involved and President Obama takes notice

By Alexander Hull    

Friday, October 7, 2011 - Zuccotti Park, New York, NY- Thousands of enraged citizens from all walks of life continue to crowd Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park as the Occupy Wall Street movement grows in both size and credibility.

What was once a harebrained scheme by little-known “culture-jamming” organization adbusters.org has, in recent days, mushroomed into a national movement welcoming any and all who are concerned about the growing gap between the rich and the poor and who feel that the wealthiest 1% of Americans exercise a disproportionate amount of social and political power in the country.

Using the motto “we are the 99 percent,” (indeed, the top 1% of Americans control about 40% of the financial wealth in America), the protestors have begun to team up with teacher and labor unions, and have even gotten an acknowledgment from President Obama himself.

"It expresses the frustrations that the American people feel that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street," Obama said. "And yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this problem in the first place."

It’s been more than three weeks since organizers set up camp in Zuccotti Park, and if Wednesday’s rally—which comprised an estimated few thousand people—is any indicator of things to come, Occupy Wall Street will continue to demand attention for many, many months.

I spent Wednesday in Wednesday in Zuccotti Park, meeting protestors and hearing their stories. This is what I found:

Tales from Zuccotti—A day with the people of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Protestors who have been camping at Wall Street for the last three weeks have by noon packed up their tents and rolled all of their possessions into large blue tarps in the middle of the square. As they prepare for a march to nearby Fulton St. at 3 PM, the loose band of protestors can be seen dancing in drum circles, talking to reporters, chanting anti-corporate slogans, and meeting like-minded citizen activists as they eat free food from an impromptu cooking center.

A medical tent has been set up not far from where the NYC General Assembly—the movement’s central decision-making entity—meets on a daily basis.

Even though Occupy Wall Street is a self-avowed “leaderless” movement, in recent days the onus has been growing on the Assembly to enumerate protestors’ demands and begin coordination with unions or political action groups. That process of narrowing the movement’s demands and keeping protestors “on message” might be nearly impossible, given the movement’s origins in anarchistic thought and its inherent disdain for top-down authoritarian structures.

Many of the protestors I spoke with openly recoiled at the idea of producing a list of demands or coordinating with government institutions that they feel are implicated in this “war against the poor.”

Some protestors, like Jay, a struggling New York actor originally from Richmond, VA, worry that articulating the movements’ specific demands could eclipse other protestors’ concerns, which are as varied as the demonstrators themselves.

Jay tells me he thinks it’s best to shy away from making demands just yet. It’s best to keep the movement broad: The protestors are there because they think that the American financial and governmental institutions exercise too much power in the country’s political, social and economic life.

It’s a simple message of indignation and disenfranchisement. In a country with an unemployment rate over 9% and as much as 15 million people out of work, frustration and ennui is an easy sell.

But every protestor has his or her own list of personal grievances. As I tour the park, I join a crowd gathering around a passionate African-American woman, who is railing on a society that separates people “by class, by race, by religion, and by creed.” The crowd of reporters, tourists, and fellow protestors (the lines are blurry, indeed) snap pictures and murmur in agreement.

But for Natalie, a 26-year-old musician from Seattle, it is derivatives trading, endless war-mongering, and corporate greed that have all helped to “disable the economy that 99% of Americans rely on for food, shelter and transportation.”

A Diverse Group of Opinions

As Occupy Wall Street continues to grow, its ability to welcome diversity of opinion—as well as equal parts anger and love—will be tested.

And its determination to embrace all forms of nebulous anger may indeed be its eventual downfall: Without specific demands, the so-called “powers that be” will have difficulty responding to a demand-less movement in meaningful ways, if they even want to in the first place.

But Jay, like many others demonstrators I met today, doesn’t care about that. He has taken the long view: He hopes that Occupy Wall Street marks the beginning of a larger social movement.

“A Tea Party of the left?” I ask him. He smiles.

“It’s really about a change of conscience more than anything else,” he says.

I then ask Jay about his political stance: He voted for Obama in 2008, as did a few of the other demonstrators I spoke with, but he also told me that many of his fellow protestors admired Ron Paul’s Libertarian leanings, not to mention the Texas politician’s knack for following through on his promises.

As for 2012, Jay said he would “wait and see what his options were,” but he didn’t rule out voting for Obama again.

A Movement Organizes

Jay sleeps just feet from where the General Assembly meets. Although the movement is by choice leaderless and by default extremely diverse, the Occupied Wall Street Journal, a daily newspaper published by a few of the better-funded protestors, characterized the General Assembly as a “horizontal, autonomous, modified-consensus-based system with roots in anarchist thought…akin to the assemblies that have been driving recent social movements in around the world in places like Argentina, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Madrid’s Puerta de la Sol and so on.”

“We are a ruly mob,” says Derek, another protestor, with a chuckle. “But don’t quote me on that, I didn’t come up with it.”

Derek is a 28-year-old mechanic from Toronto.  He tells me that finding a consensus in the General Assembly often takes days because opinions are so varied among those that participate in the decision-making process. Though Derek is in New York for only one night (his boss told him to go to Wall Street for the both of them), he has quickly taken an interest in the General Assembly’s role and wishes he could stay longer to participate in it.

Derek is no stranger to radical protests. He is a frequent cross-border immigrant to Socialist conventions and Democracy Now! events in New York and elsewhere. He, for one, greets union involvement with open arms. Labor unions will help organize marches and provide centralized direction, he says.

“America needs change in a bad way. I came to New York to be one millionth of one percent of change,” Derek says with a smile.

As 3 o'clock approaches, some of the more vocal demonstrators start a call-and-response chant asking for volunteers to help with organizing the march down to Fulton Street. Some demonstrators respond enthusiastically and rush to the front of the square, but others mostly ignore the call and go about banging on drums, strumming guitars, and speaking with press.

A Bob Dylan look-alike crows a stirring rendition of Dylan’s famous protest song “Maggie’s Farm,” and a drum circle grows in volume and intensity as protestors begin to assemble for the afternoon march.

Many protestors I meet have classic tales of miserable unemployment. They worked hard in school, went to college, and thought that would be enough. But they graduated with nothing but student debt loan and four lost years. They bartend or work in retail or live with their parents to make ends meet.

But some have come to Wall Street merely because they sympathize with the movement’s anger. Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon—both members of the dreaded 1%—visited the protests early on, and on Wednesday public intellectuals Cornel West, Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Lessig voiced their support, adding credibility to the much-maligned movement. According to a Slate report, Professor West marched with a contingent in Boston while Joseph Stiglitz, a prominent Columbia economics professor, spoke stirringly to protestors in New York.

Other protestors I meet are comfortably middle class. But Lindsey, a dancer from Brooklyn, still feels that she and other middle class workers might have had brighter futures if they had been given a "fair shot at the American Dream."

Lindsey is 29. She and her husband can barely afford a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, and they cannot afford to pay for medical insurance. Though she openly admits that she is “lucky to be better off than most,” she is concerned that 1.1 million New Yorkers earn less than the poverty line, a paltry $22,350 per year.

New York’s top executives, she says with a snarl, make that much in a single month, if not less.

I ask Lindsey whether she thinks the movement’s diverse array of messages and demands is an asset or a failing:

“I think the movement’s diversity is an asset. Everyone can relate; anyone who feels screwed over or is struggling—this is a movement for anyone who wants to eliminate and punish corporate greed.”

“And how long can we expect to see the movement last?” I ask.

“Oh, we’ll be here all winter if we can! This is only the beginning,” she shouts with a fist pump and a smile.
 

Alexander Hull