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The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street
John L. Hammond
Hunter College and Graduate Center, City University of New York
Sociology Department
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, New York 10021
212-663-1358
fax: 212-772-5645
e-mail: jhammond@hunter.cuny.edu
(forthcoming in Science and Society)
John L. Hammond is the author of Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in
El Salvador (Rutgers University Press, 1998) and Building Popular Power: Workers' and
Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution. He teaches sociology at Hunter College and
the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street1
John L. Hammond
The Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) erupted on September 17, 2011, to occupy, not Wall Street
itself, but nearby Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. Inspired by the Arab Spring and protests in Spain,
Greece, and Wisconsin, a small band of hardy protesters moved into the park, set up camp, and
remained for two months. The occupation was a protest against economic inequality, the giant
financial institutions, and the political system which kowtows to them. OWS pointed to the extreme
inequality of wealth and its exacerbation by government financial policies such as the 2008 bailout of
the banks and the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision (2010) that permitted unlimited corporate
political campaign donations. With the slogan "We are the 99%" it drew attention to the vast gulf
between the wealthy few and the struggling majority.
The protest was not just about the corporations or economic inequality, however. Occupiers
aspired to transform social values to favor human relations over financial transactions. They believed
that in Zuccotti Park they could organize a community on their own terms.
This dynamic new movement ignited a spark that spread from New York to hundreds of towns
and cities across the United States and abroad. Observers did not know what to make of it. One
feature stood out in many accounts: it was labeled "anarchist." It had several characteristics that
seemed to warrant the label: a claim to leaderlessness, a refusal to make specific policy demands, and a
magnetism that attracted police bearing nightsticks, handcuffs, and pepper spray canisters to its almost
daily marches.
Occupy Wall Street can be characterized as anarchist, but in a very complicated sense. The
movement quickly attracted the whole spectrum of the left, from liberal Democrats to revolutionary
1
I appreciate the helpful comments of John Clark, André Drainville, Benjamin Franks, Nanette Funk,
Heather Gautney, Jeffrey Juris, Eduardo Romanos, Markus Schulz, and Karsten Struhl.
communists, with a few rightwing libertarians thrown in. There were many in it who had anarchistic
ideas, but they did not necessarily call themselves anarchists, some because they rejected all political
labels and others because they thought "anarchist" implied political positions that they rejected. And
the movement had no central authority that could dictate any political line.
Still it was anarchist in spirit and sensibility; anarchists (whether declared or not) set the tone of
the movement. This anarchism consisted far less in concrete aspirations to a future society free of
coercion, or in any political strategy, than in everyday organization and interpersonal relations. It
claimed to be leaderless and to be governed by consensus; it attempted to meet the needs of occupiers
internally and cooperatively; and it engaged in defiant protest which led to confrontations with the
police.
In examining the anarchism of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, I will first give a brief
account of the occupation. Next I will discuss the meaning of the term "anarchism" in history and in
the minds of some occupiers; while those who called themselves anarchists or self-consciously
embraced anarchist principles were not a majority, many occupiers had a strong affinity for anarchist
ideas and practices. Third, I will show that those ideas and practices constituted a sensibility that
characterized the movement as a whole. I will then consider the sources of the attraction of anarchist
ideas and practices for a broad segment of the left, especially among the young, in the United States
today. Finally I will discuss how these ideas and practices and this broad sensibility affected the
movement's political impact.
Life in Zuccotti Park2
In its July, 2011 issue, the Canadian anticonsumer magazine Adbusters published a call to
occupy Wall Street. Citing Tahrir Square in Cairo as its inspiration and filling a two-page spread, it
2
General accounts of the occupation can be found in Bray (2013), Graeber (2012), Schneider (2013),
and Gitlin (2012). The first three are written from an anarchist perspective by authors who were deeply
involved in the movement; the fourth from the perspective of an engaged outsider.
2
read (in its entirety):
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?
On Sept. 17, flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents,
kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street.
Groups of people started meeting in New York during the summer to lay plans. Responding to the
Adbusters call, some political groups that had been involved in anti-Wall Street protests in recent
months called a general assembly for August 2, to be held at the statue of the bull near Wall Street.
The main organizers came from the sectarian party Workers World; many who showed up were
disaffected by their dominating and scripted conduct of the meeting and split off to convene a separate
meeting in a nearby park. This small group grew in successive meetings in August and September to
plan for and publicize the action and prepare logistical support.
Many of these initial organizers were self-conscious anarchists. In particular, David Graeber,
who was already well known as a theorist of a newly revived anarchist movement (Graeber, 2004 and
2009), and was to become the chief ideologue of the Occupy movement, and Marisa Holmes, who
became an important apostle of anarchist practices in the movement, took the lead. They made several
proposals to the series of general assemblies; first, that the meetings be run by the consensus process
that was derived from Quaker practice and had become common in anarchist circles in the
antiglobalization movement. According to Holmes3, a "process group" formed at the first assembly of
"people who had a lot of experience with process either as part of the alterglobalization movement or
had been trained by those people." They proposed that meetings be conducted based on consensus
rather than majority rule. "We wanted to create a set of practices that are anarchistic and popularize
them." The most important practices were "direct democracy, self management, self—organization,
3
Quotations without bibliographic reference are from interviews. With their permission, I have
identified interview subjects by their real names. There is one exception; I use a pseudonym for one
person but it is the name by which the person was known to other occupiers.
3
trying to create egalitarian social relations. That is what horizontalism means: sharing power."
For two months Zuccotti Park became a space for living where the occupiers created a
communal life embodying the principles that underlay their practice: without formal leaders, everyone
would have equal standing and the occupation itself would model (or prefigure) the future society to
which they aspired. This aspiration found direct expression in the occupation's organization, from the
processes for reaching consensus in meetings to the provision of food, medical care, and security.
Though these practices can be found in other movements and organizations, occupiers identified them
with anarchism.
Organizing several hundred people on a site required work. Occupiers divided up into working
groups to perform a variety of tasks. Some managed logistics: keeping the place clean, receiving and
distributing donations of food and supplies, providing medical care. Many who were homeless or poor
showed up asking for help, and they were provided for. (They were also incorporated into the
occupation's activities. Some caused problems; others made important contributions.) Others prepared
the almost daily marches or chatted up the local merchants who allowed the people camping out to use
their facilities.
They engaged in constant political discussion. Young, articulate, and well-informed protesters
ranged intensely over political issues, personal troubles, the structure of the economy and the polity,
and the future. Full-time occupiers and others who just dropped in took part and found the experience
of these conversations energizing and liberating. Anyone on the occupation site in New York, occupier
or visitor, could feel the pulsating, vibrant energy. Groups formed and dissolved in the course of a day
as people switched back and forth from concrete tasks to deliberation and discussion. The General
Assembly met daily to make decisions in which all could participate. On September 29 a general
assembly adopted a Declaration of the Occupation of New York City presenting a catalogue of
grievances against corporations. In language that echoed the Declaration of Independence, it accused
4
them of exploitation, inequality, discrimination, destruction of the environment, and a wide-ranging
bill of offenses (Declaration, 2011). This declaration is the closest thing there is to an authoritative
statement of the OWS platform.
Some organized to address the outside world in political mobilization and in media of
communication. Many occupiers came from or aspired to careers in writing, the arts, the media, and
information technology. Now they applied their talents to broadcasting their message in word and
image, through old and new media, in a spectacular outpouring of creativity. They attracted the
attention of national and international media. The slogan "We are the 99%" drew attention to the gulf
separating the mass of the population from the few who ran the country and controlled its economy. It
is a testament to the slogan's brilliance that the idea of the 99% rapidly took hold in public
consciousness and stimulated mounting public attention to economic inequality in the supposed land of
opportunity.
Defining Anarchism
Anarchism is a contentious term. Movements calling themselves anarchist have existed for at
least a century and a half, with fluctuating fortunes and varying agendas. In general anarchists eschew
doctrine and emphasize practice, so it is hard to find any definitive statement to which all or even most
anarchists would subscribe.4 Broadly, anarchism holds that relations among people should be
governed by voluntary association freely chosen, without coercion and without authority being
exercised by some over others, and that those relations should be defined by agreements reached
consensually.
For classical anarchism, this meant a rejection of entanglement with any formal state
4
Contestation over the meaning of anarchism shows up in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It is
crowdsourced, and anyone can change what another contributor has written. Sometimes a battle ensues in
which the original contributor rejects the change and restores the previous text; this is known as a revert.
"Anarchism" is the second most reverted article in English Wikipedia, trailing only "George W. Bush"
("Edit Wars," 2013).
5
institutions, which they regarded as necessarily coercive. Most were also anticapitalist, and believed
that capitalism was a major source of evils in contemporary society, but they also believed that any
state institutions were necessarily coercive regardless of their economic underpinnings. In the late
nineteenth century European workers' movement, anarchists fought with Marxists. Marxists, like
anarchists, looked to the eventual abolition of the state; unlike anarchists, however, they believed that
to that end workers must lay the groundwork by appropriating the state and exercising the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Anarchists argued that such coercion violated their principles (Avrich, 1970;
Graeber, 2009; Guerin, 1970; Joll, 1980)
Along with the rejection of authority went a strong tendency to sympathize with those who
were believed to be the most oppressed of society, such as (at different historical points) the
lumpenproletariat, minority groups, victims of police repression, and people confined to mental
institutions. Often sympathizers attributed a purity to those groups because they were seen as least
contaminated by mainstream, bourgeois society; never having enjoyed its supposed benefits, they were
not subject to its temptations.
Classical anarchism flourished for several decades around the turn of the twentieth century. It
inspired the council (soviet) movement in the Russian revolution and in the upheavals that shook Italy
after First World War. It reached its peak in the Spanish Civil War, when anarchists created
autonomous production and community collectives that were crushed after the defeat of the Republic
(Boggs, 1977a; Dolgoff, 1974; Guerin, 1970; Spriano, 1975).
Some anarchists held views closer to what is today called libertarianism, a very individualistic,
self-centered version of rejection of authority structures, but they were always a minority (Bray, 2013:
53; Guerin, 1970: 27-28).
Anarchists wanted to do away with the state not only because they rejected coercion. They also
believed in the philosophical principle that means used to achieve any end must be consistent with that
6
end (Franks, 2003, 2008; Graeber, 2009: 210). Anarchists opt for one horn of an age-old dilemma in
political action, which Max Weber (1946: 120) called the conflict between the ethic of responsibility
and the ethic of ultimate ends. The responsible political actor, according to Weber, defines a goal and
seeks out the means that will be effective in achieving it. That Weber called it responsibility rather
than, for example, pragmatism or opportunism makes clear where his sympathies lay.
The anarchists argued, to the contrary, that means and ends are inseparable. They believed that
the pursuit of ultimate ends must embody those ends in the process of trying to achieve them, and
refused to use means which might pollute the process so that the end is itself contaminated. As David
Graeber describes it, "One cannot, [anarchists] argued, create peace by training for war, equality by
creating top-down chains of command, or, for that matter, human happiness by becoming grim joyless
revolutionaries who sacrifice all personal self-realization or self-fulfillment to the cause" (2013: 190;
cf. Franks, 2003 and 2008).
The principle that means and ends must be consistent has been called prefiguration. A
prefigurative movement tries to create, within the movement itself, social relations without alienation
or exploitation, anticipating (or "prefiguring") the social relations of the new society that the movement
hopes to create.5
The anarchism of Occupy Wall Street was not particularly concerned with the questions of state
form or inequality of power that were prominent in the discussions and plans of earlier anarchists.
Graeber has referred to this antidogmatic version as "small-a anarchism" (2013: 89, 192). Rather than
5
The term prefiguration was coined by Carl Boggs (Boggs, personal communication) to characterize
revolutionary movements in Russia, Italy, Spain, and the US New Left (Boggs, 1977a and 1977b). It was
applied by Sheila Rowbotham (1979) to the women's movement of the 1970s, by Wini Breines (1980 and
1989) to the US SDS, and by myself to the Portuguese Revolution (Hammond, 1984 and 1988). In none
of these cases was it identified with anarchism, though it clearly evokes a concept proposed by anarchists
around the turn of the twentieth century (cf. Franks, 2003 and 2008; Romanos, 2013). It has been used
more widely in the present century, especially in relation to movements for participatory democracy that
in some ways anticipate the politics of OWS (Polletta, 2002; Hammond, 2012a; Sitrin, 2006).
7
envision a specific political future, it prescribes a set of practices within the movement itself that
activists believed embodied the ideal of the future they wished to create. Nevertheless, as I will show,
the issue of pragmatism (a term I prefer to Weber's "responsibility" because it does not so clearly
prejudge the issue) versus ultimate ends was a major implicit issue in the movement, one that I will
make explicit in evaluating it.
OWS drew on a history of movement activism from which it inherited a set of ideas and
practices that I call anarchist. I refer to "ideas and practices" simultaneously because they are both.
Practices were intentional; they were adopted because they enacted the beliefs. From the 1960s, the
early civil rights movement, younger members of the second wave women's movement, and Students
for a Democratic Society were oriented to participatory democracy. These impulses converged with
practices coming from the Quakers and in the Movement for a New Society, which promoted the idea
of consensus-based movement organization in the 1970s and 1980s. The same ideas were largely
adopted by the antinuclear movement which occupied nuclear power plant sites in the effort to shut
them down or prevent their construction.
Polletta (2002) sees continuity from the early civil rights movement and other 1960s
movements for participatory democracy to anarchist-influenced movements of the more recent past.
There is some continuity, but these earlier movements, far from being anarchist, were distinctly
enmeshed with the state and strove for practical political reform (Cornell, 2009; Epstein, 2001;
Polletta, 2002).
"Cultural" or "lifestyle" anarchism attracted some young people in the 1990s, when it
overlapped with punk culture; their anarchism was mostly individualist in orientation but some people
who went through it later turned their antiauthoritarian streak to political causes in the antiglobalization
and Occupy movements (Andersen, 1984; Bray 2013: 130; Gabler, 2012; Gautney, 2009; Romanos,
2013).
8
Anarchism by that name begin to gain currency in the antinuclear movement of the 1970s and
1980s and, even more, in the antiglobalization/alterglobalization/global justice movement beginning in
the 1990s. A broad coalition was behind the anti-WTO actions in Seattle in 1999, but groups with
anarchist leanings got most of the attention. They followed anarchist principles of organization, and
some of them smashed some windows in the "Battle of Seattle." The antiglobalization movement
bridged the turn of the twenty-first century with spectacular blockades of international summit
meetings. It eventually faded but had in the process introduced cadres of young people to anarchism.
The briefly revived SDS around 2006 drew on this group (Epstein, 1991 and 2001; Flesher Fominaya,
2007; Graeber, 2009, 2012c, and 2013; Hammond, 2012a: 224-29; Juris, 2009; Maeckelbergh, 2012;
Sitrin, 2006: 3-5; Polletta, 2002). These movements contained the germ of horizontalism and
consensus that became the hallmark of OWS.
OWS's Anarchism
I identify five fundamental tenets of anarchism that I argue were prevalent in OWS. As I have
suggested, anarchism is at least as much a practice as it is a doctrine. These tenets not only were
cognitively accepted by many occupiers but also guided their behavior. The movement put them into
practice even when not all activists subscribed to them explicitly. I infer their existence and centrality
from activists' statements and activities in combination.6
Like all social movements, Occupy Wall Street's membership was diffuse and fluid, with
varying levels of participation. I see anarchism as the fundamental orientation of the movement
because it prevailed among the most active. Gitlin (2012: 206) describes the "inner" and the "outer"
movement; Mark Bray (2013: 3-4) surveyed 192 people he describes as core organizers of the
occupation and constituting "the vast majority of those that made Occupy Wall Street happen." He is
6
This analysis is specifically of the occupation of "Wall Street" (actually, Zuccotti Park) in New York;
these anarchistic tenets held to varying degrees in other occupations.
9
not precise about his selection criteria; his claim is based mainly on his own experience as one of the
core organizers. He found that 39% considered themselves anarchists, and another 33% held anarchist
ideas without necessarily embracing the label.
There were many who were occasionally present in the park and took part in marches and
General Assemblies, and another group (the largest), who turned out for major events, such as the big
marches, and sympathized with the occupation, but whose primary political commitments were
elsewhere. I argue (with Bray), however, that the tone of the occupation was set by its core organizers,
in particular by those who were in earliest, many of whom promoted anarchist practices in the general
assemblies before September 17. Those who were less involved or sympathized from outside did not
have a distinct impact on either the practice or the course of the movement.
I reconstruct the vision that I believe inspired the movement, as I have discovered it in
interviews, reading of documents, and observation. These tenets were ideals, and far from perfectly
realized; the action of individuals and of the movement as a whole departed significantly from them.
My purpose, however, is not to criticize the shortfalls but rather to describe the ideals underlying the
movement.
Nevertheless I will discuss their effect on the movement. I believe that Occupy's anarchism
meant focusing attention on the movement and occupation as an entity, more than on effecting the
social transformations to which people endorsing these principles aspired. This is not to say that
activists consciously chose to put building a movement ahead of effecting social change. Some did,
some didn't. But in combination these tenets produced an organizational logic that led to discounting
the practicality of actions to achieve those goals and to focus on the movement as an experience.
I identify five tenets:
•
Horizontalism/consensus
•
Prefiguration
10
•
Autonomy
•
Mutual aid
•
Defiance
1. Horizontalism/consensus
[The] liberty of each individual . . . far from halting as at a boundary before the liberty of
others, finds there its confirmation and its extension to infinity; the illimitable liberty of each
through the liberty of all, liberty by solidarity, liberty in equality--Michael Bakunin (1950: 17).
A horizontal movement is one with no permanent leadership; everyone has equal standing
(Sitrin, 2006: 3-4). Occupy was decentralized and took pride in being leaderless (some occupiers
preferred the term "leaderful," calling everyone a leader). Each occupation was independent of the
others, but they were in constant contact using modern media of communication.
Horizontalism was manifest in the inclusiveness of the occupation; everyone was welcome.
The daily general assemblies were In principle run by consensus. Anyone present could join in
discussions and share in decisionmaking. Procedures for meetings attempted to institutionalize
elements of the consensus process adopted from earlier movements influenced by anarchism, especially
the global justice movement. They were meant to assure equal participation and prevent some people
from dominating. Among them are the stack, the people's microphone, and hand signals. The stack is
the list of people who asked to be recognized to speak. Sometimes it was a "progressive stack,"
bumping people ahead because, as women or members of minority groups, they were often
marginalized.
In large assemblies, people communicated via the "people's microphone." Bullhorns are
prohibited in New York City without a police permit. Because occupiers declined to apply to the
police for permits, they had to circumvent the ban. Someone addressing a mass meeting pauses after
each phrase and the people nearby repeat it in unison to the crowd; if the crowd is big, a second circle
of shouters repeats it. If it is even bigger than that, people on the periphery listen on their phones and
11
shout it to nearby listeners. The people's mic produces a sense of power: having spoken in a general
assembly, I can personally attest that if you say something and dozens of people repeat it, you have the
feeling of really being listened to. And for those playing the role of the mic amplifying a speaker's
voice, the call and response is physically energizing and provides a strong sense of participation. If the
people's mic was initially adopted as a form of resistance against regulations that occupiers regarded as
denying them their right to speak, it can become a source of joy: people take so much pleasure in using
it that sometimes a small group that can hear perfectly well nevertheless goes through the ritual of
repeating each speaker's words.
Hand signals were adopted to minimize some predictable delays in an open meeting, but came
to be identified as the main operationalization of consensus process. People voted (or registered a
"temperature check," a straw vote prior to a definitive vote) with "twinkles", raising one or both hands
and wiggling fingers: fingers pointing straight up signify assent, fingers pointing down signify
disagreement, fingers pointing forward register neutrality or ambivalence. People used the same
signals at any time to show agreement or disagreement with what a speaker was saying. Other signals
were used in meetings: a triangle formed by the fingers signaled a point of process; rolling the hands
meant "wrap it up," a polite way to say a speaker has gone on too long. Crossed arms in front of the
body represented a "block"--the blocker was so strongly opposed to a proposal that he or she was
willing to deny a consensus, which meant that no action could be taken.
Straight up-or-down votes were rare; the hope was to reach agreement through discussion. The
principle of consensus was modified after a while to require a "90% consensus." But the use of the
procedures expressed the principle of horizontalism to put everyone on an equal footing. Often the
point was not so much to reach decisions as to give everyone a chance to speak, to find a position
everyone could live with and that therefore did not require coercive enforcement (Schneider, 2013: 19;
Graeber, 2011). But the focus sometimes came to be on the procedures more than on the goal of
12
reaching agreement; when the New York occupation sent emissaries to occupations around the country
to offer training in how to occupy, these procedures for achieving consensus were a major lesson. The
hand signals and the people's mic in particular came to take on a ritual quality, what Barbara Epstein
calls "elements of Occupy's collective identity" (2012: 70).
Thus everyone had, in theory, an equal role in decisions,
preventing the accumulation of
power by leaders. According to Dale Luce, "We [were] trying to exercise our democratic muscle here
in the park, . . . That was the main thrust; we needed to live in a more horizontal, participatory society."
And as Justin Wedes put it, "Horizontality is a really important premise of our work. The idea
is that nobody is in a position of centralized power or authority; we don't have a leader."
Pursuing consensus often brought problems, as Shawn Carrié acknowledged: "That is what
democracy is: messy, slow, it's a necessary quality. Dictatorship is very clear. You can make decisions
very quickly, without much discussion. Its opposite is going to take time, it's going to be messy.
People are not going to agree. Democracy is the rule of many."
The public relations working group, formed to orient journalists, was impatient with those who
were always trying the find "the leaders" of Occupy Wall Street. According to Mark Bray of the PR
group, "The media was eager to key in on one or two individuals not only because it fits their
understanding of hierarchy but also makes their job a lot easier. They are lazy. They show up at noon
and want to be out at one. Depending on how you look at it, we have no leaders or we are all leaders."
Leaderlessness was also expressed in skill sharing in day-to-day activities. People who were
skilled and experienced trained others in the same skills, whether screenprinting, video production, or
meeting facilitation itself. According to Rebecca Manski (n.d.), "OWS' aim is to create a space for the
emergence of as-yet unactivated individuals to discover their leadership capacity." She added in an
interview, "Everyone is needed, everyone has something to offer . . . It is a culture that believes in
mistakes and learning from mistakes, maybe making them again, embracing mistakes, not necessarily
13
presenting polished final decisions or final images for public consumption."
Mark Bray: "As you participate you take on more of a leadership role. You become
knowledgeable and competent. But no one is more or less authorized to speak to the press on behalf of
the whole group. This means wider participation. Against the hierarchy that manifests itself in our
society, we are trying to combat through our organizing" (Barragan and Bray, 2011).
Katie Davison, who produced videos in the occupation--most notably, instances of police
brutality filmed during demonstrations--contrasted the pleasure of working on an egalitarian basis in
"this leaderless, horizontal movement" to the rigid hierarchy that she experienced in professional film
production. "I am hoping that this value system will resonate more; I don't know if human nature wants
us to centralize."
The desire to include everyone sometimes created problems. As noted, anarchism has an
implicit sympathy with underdogs, and may tolerate their idiosyncrasies because they are perceived as
the most oppressed in society. Free food and shelter in tents in Zuccotti Park attracted homeless people
(rumor had it that police around the city directed them there). Many of them were integrated and took
up tasks as members of working groups; others acted out their problems, causing difficulties that had to
be dealt with (as discussed more below).
While the claim of "leaderlessness" was sometimes enunciated defensively, to deny that anyone
exercised leadership, many occupiers recognized that there were leaders but emphasized that no one
had a permanent leadership position or authority to give orders to anyone else, and that many
developed leadership skills during the occupation.
Justin Wedes: "I think the beauty of a leaderless or leaderful movement (I think both terms
apply in different situations in Occupy) is that people can rise into positions of leadership when it is
needed, and then fall back and regroup--think about and reflect on the situation and not let it get to
their head too much. That is the important thing: not letting the hype and buzz or the ego take hold."
14
José Alcoff: "One of the biggest central themes is the idea of self-organization. You don't have
outside leadership. Things are self-organized, self-directed. . . . The principal thing a leader should do
is create more leaders. Horizontality is not a fiction, an ideology or a systemic organizational model. It
is an aspiration."
2. Prefiguration
How could one want an equalitarian and free society to issue from authoritarian organisation? It
is impossible.--James Guillaume, a comrade of Bakunin (quoted by Franks, 2003: 22)
A prefigurative movement tries to embody "within the ongoing political practice of a movement
. . . those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the
ultimate goal" (Boggs, 1977: 100). Prefiguration means to create within the structures of a movement
the type of social relations that the movement seeks to bring into practice in a new, reorganized society:
in an old anarchist slogan, to "[build] the new society in the shell of the old" (Graeber, 2013: 190).
As Graeber has it, the form of the action "is itself a model for the change one wishes to bring
about" (2009: 210). Prefiguration means, first, to model the desired social relations, more fulfilling
and less estranged than those typical of alienated capitalist society; second, to make the means
consistent with the end, as Guillaume indicates in the epigraph to this section.
One unanticipated outcome of the occupation was the creation of a vibrant community.
Feelings of solidarity and community are an important part of the motive for participation in social
movements. This is not to say that community is always achieved, especially in the contentious
atmosphere frequently found in left movements in the United States. Nevertheless, because
participation is voluntary, it must be enjoyable; so participants look for good social relations.
According to Amin Husain, "We need love. We need warmth. In the park, people gave hugs,
they didn't shake hands. I don't mean that in a sentimental way."
For Leah Feder, "What attracted me about Occupy Wall Street was the utopian dimension,
trying to model an alternative way of living." David Graeber amplifies: "Zuccotti Park, and all
15
subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of
other institutions, all operating on anarchist principles of mutual aid and self-organisation" (2011).
Closely related to the ideal of community in prefigurative social movements is that of
participatory democracy. The slogan and the practice of participatory democracy were inherited from
movements of the 1960s (Epstein, 1991; Polletta, 2002). But in Occupy more than in these earlier
movements, community building and acting out their vision tended to take on as much importance as
the political goals.
One aspect of prefiguration already mentioned was the collaboration on tasks in which people's
capacities were cultivated. Occupiers welcomed newcomers to take a leading role in the activities of
working groups; the more experienced shared their skills with the novices. According to Michael Fix
of the video production team, people developed and exercised skills rapidly. "What was beautiful
about Occupy: if you made yourself available, you stepped up and offered, within two or three days you
are the go-to person."
A prefigurative institution that gestated in the occupation was self-managed worker
cooperatives. A subgroup of the alternative economy working group promoted such coops. Dale Luce
participated in discussions about "the role that worker cooperatives might play in New York, solving
some of the issues that Occupy Wall Street tried to bring to the attention of the public. It can help to
build a more democratic, horizontal world." Luce went on to be cofounder of Occucopy (later Radix
Media), a worker-controlled copy shop,
3. Autonomy
Direct Action . . . is a matter of proceeding as if the existing structure of power did not exist.-David Graeber (2013: 233)
A third tenet was autonomy. People in Occupy Wall Street should (primarily) act on their own
to achieve their goals, without reference to the world outside--In particular, without reference to
16
authority and the forces of order. The entire project of the occupation was a statement of independence
from existing authority structures.
Their autonomy brought forth many creative endeavors. The movement created its own media
to counter the bias and transcend the rigidity of the mainstream media. A polyphonic and creative
outburst emerged in word and image, in print, in visual arts, and online. Several publications appeared.
Aspiring media professionals who were attracted to the movement in New York produced movement
journalism (often called citizen journalism to emphasize its nonprofessional status): the Occupied Wall
Street Journal, the magazine Tidal: Occupy Theory, Occupy Strategy, Indignación (in Spanish, taking
its name from the Indignados movement in Spain); and many others. They were all distributed for
free. Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, became critical channels for sharing information
about fast-breaking activities. Several groups (formally recognized working groups and others)
produced artwork and performances. Video producers documented the occupation and posted their
productions, as well as creative endeavors in music and humorous video segments, to YouTube. All
these endeavors were meant as alternatives to the content, style, and production practices of the
mainstream media. They did not officially represent Occupy Wall Street, but some made a point to
assert their independence even from the movement.
Some computer and information technologists formed the Technical Operations working group.
TechOps (and sister committees in occupations around the country) worked to free the movement (and
the public) from dependence on big technology corporations, especially in two areas: live streaming
and free software. Some built inexpensive laptop computers and distributed them to occupations
around the country, mainly for purposes of live streaming occupations and particularly confrontations
with the police. Live streaming--capturing events and broadcasting them, live and unedited, to the
internet--was a new technology to which the Global Revolution group contributed important technical
innovations even as it aggregated livestreams from occupations and demonstrations around the world.
17
The free software movement long antedates Occupy, but many who were attracted to its
principles were also attracted to the anarchistic spirit of Occupy. Free Libre Open Source (FLOS)
software is free of charge; libre (free) of intellectual property restrictions; and open source because the
source code is published and any user is free to modify and improve it (Balkind, 2013). FLOS software
is intended both to return the means of production to the user and skirt the cost and restrictiveness of
the giant software monopolies.
TechOps members built a suite of innovative software to serve social movements, in email,
computer mapping, membership management, and live streaming. Devin Balkind valued independent
sources of technology for several reasons: "The intention behind the tool is to do more than simply
provide the Occupy movement with useful tools, but to provide a FLO alternative to the world's largest
web application provider: Google. . . . Our ability to frame Occupy.net as an alternative to corporate
software is what attracts activist technologists to maintain services under the Occupy.net name"
(Balkind, 2013). Drew Hornbein reinforced the resistance to corporate dominance: "We need to own
various levels of infrastructure that our data and personal information travel across. When you look at
Google, and Twitter, and Facebook, they offer free services because they view you as a product. You
pay for the product by handing over your information that you send over their networks."
While he enthused about free software, Balkind was somewhat dismissive of social media,
which others saw as a key tool for spreading the revolution: "You aren't going to build a society off of
retweets; but you are off of documentation on how to manage a newsletter or how to build research."
As Occupy drew attention and praise from sympathetic quarters, it protected its independence
fiercely, determined to resist cooptation. Handwritten signs that marchers carried in demonstrations
were a small but telling symbol of that independence. In political demonstrations in recent years, it has
been more common to see demonstrators carrying printed signs supplied by formal organizations (such
as unions and political groups) that decide on the permitted slogans and distribute the signs to members
18
to carry. Occupiers, in contrast, created their own slogans and painted them on cardboard. These signs
offered an opportunity for creativity. Many of them showed a touch of humor.7 They created an
atmosphere very different from one dominated by uniform printed signs. By exercising individual
creativity, protesters rejected subservience to a hierarchical organization.
Occupiers refused to engage in electoral politics, even though, with the election of 2012
looming, many friendly critics hoped that they would mobilize behind the Obama campaign and
influence the election as the Tea Party had done in 2010. Bill Moyers, interviewing two occupiers,
urged them to take up practical politics, seeking allies among established politicians as the civil rights
movement had done. Amin Husain responded: "Martin Luther King didn't go to LBJ; he said, 'I have a
dream.' The people in Liberty Square have a dream: no war, no oppression, no patriarchy, justice,
fairness equality. I want to hear a dream articulated that has these things in it" (Moyers, 2012). Or, as
Nathan Schneider put it, they saw politics as "not a matter of choosing among what was offered but of
fighting for what we actually need" (2013: 77).
They were also impatient with traditional approaches to political action. Matt Presto attended
the general assemblies that laid the groundwork for OWS in August, 2011, because he hoped that "it
would be a refreshing approach to politics in New York City that had been dominated by the traditional
day of action approach: get a permit, march down the street, then everybody goes home" (Holmes and
Presto, 2012).
The Statement of Autonomy (2011), adopted by the New York City General Assembly on
November 10, 2011, emphasized independence from existing political forces and from the demands of
compromise for the sake of political expediency. Just as prefiguration meant using means consistent
with their ends, and not descending to compromise (or to the "ethic of responsibility"), autonomy
7
A sampling can be seen at http://www.damncoolpictures.com/2011/10/best-signs-from-occupy-wallstreet.html
19
meant making alliances with other political groups only on their own terms.
Some sneered at the "NGO-industrial complex," though sympathetic observers and even other
occupiers thought they displayed a virtually paranoid fear of cooptation. There were occupiers who,
more thoughtfully, granted that complex some legitimacy, including Rebecca Manski, who had worked
in the world of nonprofit advocacy organizations: "I don't resent people who take that approach, I feel
that I want more than that--to push forward, not be afraid to talk about things that have to be talked
about because it means I will lose an ally, or a grant, or alienate a constituency." She also saw value in
an alliance that was implicit rather than explicit: "Now [formal advocacy organizations have] freedom
for a more creative strategy because Occupy was able to do that whole change of conversation . . . after
[they have spent] decades of trying to change the conversation and failing. I see us in a symbiotic
relationship, in need of each other."
Autonomy meant refusing to make specific demands, declining large donations from
celebrities, and not negotiating with police over permits for demonstrations or for permission to stay in
the park. Some occupiers who wanted Occupy to endorse a platform of demands created a Demands
Working Group. The group debated what those demands should be, and then took a proposal to the
General Assembly. It was rejected. Most occupiers refused even to formulate demands on principle,
because to make demands was already to conform to the mainstream agenda, and any fixed set of
demands would be intrinsically reformist (Bray, 2013: 27-28, 104-106; Graeber, 2013: 87-89).
Some outsiders offered large donations of money to OWS but many occupiers were suspicious
of becoming beholden to them. After the occupation was evicted, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice
Cream offered to fund major projects through a proposed tax-exempt foundation, reserving for himself
a leading role in deciding who would get the money. Marisa Holmes criticized the would-be donor as
well as those who wanted to take his money: "They do not understand a leaderless, horizontal
movement. They are creating a nonprofit and hiring people away from Occupy with salary or as
20
freelance." Some occupiers nevertheless took advantage of Cohen's largesse; others raised money for
projects through Kickstarter or other means independent of the General Assembly. (OWS also
received a large amount of money in small donations which were not seen as compromising, but its
disposition also caused disputes, as I discuss below.)
A key decision made at one of the first general assemblies, before the occupation, was to have
no contact with the police. Many felt that negotiating with the police over permits for actions and
locations meant accepting unreasonable restrictions--and the police often repressed them violently
anyway. If they did not negotiate or apply for permits, they preserved the possibility of surprise and
remained free to engage in action on the boundaries of legality.
4. Mutual Aid
In the ethical progress of man, mutual support--not mutual struggle--has had the leading part.-Petr Kropotkin (1955: 300)
The tenets of Occupy's anarchism overlap, in both the ideas and the practices that embody them,
as we have already seen. The complement of autonomy is mutual aid: for those who refuse to rely on
the large institutions of government and corporation and insist on their independence, the alternative is
a DiY (Do It Yourself) ethos. But not an individualistic ethos; it relies on a community of like-minded
people. Finding a mode of reciprocal caring was also an expression of the desire to prefigure a future
society.
If Occupy Wall Street was a protest against the power of money in political life, it was also a
protest against the power of money in everyday life, of the commodification of the provision of care for
so many needs that had formerly been the province of solidary groups (Graeber, 2013: 127; cf.
Hochschild, 2012). David Graeber's book Debt (2012a), written before the occupation, is both an
analysis of the many ways in which support, caring, and relationships become commodified in
contemporary life and a cry of protest.
Mutual aid was modeled in the park by working groups created to meet both the material and
21
nonmaterial needs of the occupiers: the kitchen (dispensing donated food, since cooking in the park
was banned as a fire hazard), the medical team, sanitation, comfort (distributing donated tents and
sleeping bags), and the People's Library. There was a jail support group for those arrested, and to
welcome them when they emerged. In the crisis working group, social service and mental health
professionals counseled people who showed signs of mental distress. Many social service
professionals, too used to seeing their generous impulses transformed into transactions, could practice
their professions in OWS without bureaucratic and financial exigencies.
According to Shawn Carrié, the occupation constituted an "autonomous zone . . . a selforganized world that had a kitchen that would feed anyone, run on donated supplies; a world that could
exist free from capitalism. It had a miniature apparatus of state: food, shelter, communications media,
assemblies where the body politic comes together to determine our collective existence and engage in
the politics of community--all the infrastructural components of society. That is a demonstration of
what is possible if we think about the world in a different way, free from the domination of capitalist
power and state power."
Two aspects of providing mutual aid nevertheless caused controversy: the management of
money and the dilemma that mutual aid might devolve into one-sided service provision. According to
Marisa Holmes, "It was sort of an accident that we even had this money. . . . for day S17, maybe a few
days after . . . we bought giant jugs of peanut butter and bagels. . . . We wanted to emphasize in-kind
donations and try to have a principle of mutual aid. If that wasn't possible we were okay with dealing
with some money but we didn't have mechanisms for dealing with money. That was irresponsible"
(Holmes and Presto, 2012).
The NYCGA had a Paypal account and received tax-deductible donations through a fiscal
sponsor, and over seven hundred thousand dollars poured in. Without much of a plan either for
maintaining the funds or for disbursing them, the GA doled out the money in response to proposals
22
presented by working groups. As Holmes wrote later, "The General Assembly was becoming a
bureaucratic, money-allocating machine of the mob. This was completely counter to its original
intention" (2012: 155).
How occupiers should practice mutual aid also raised issues. Matt Presto recognized that
caring did not have the prestige or attraction of militant confrontation with authorities. "What is
characterized as real struggle is the most militant kind of struggle; what is devalued is the areas of care.
Jail support is not glamorized, not sexy, not like taking to the streets. It's also very gendered: jail
support was mostly women" (Holmes and Presto, 2012).
The problem was not only that mutual aid was not glamorous; it was also that it could cease to
be mutual, devolving instead into giveaways to people who did not understand it as part of a political
project. Especially after the eviction from Zuccotti Park, some occupiers were homeless either because
they had been living on the streets or because they had abandoned homes in other cities to join the
occupation, and other occupiers felt responsible for them. Some received handouts of money; some
were put up in friendly churches or on other occupiers' couches. According to Marisa Holmes, "it
became much more like a service sector. The problem with the service sector is you have all these
resources being managed; we definitely had people after the eviction receiving services, and people
managing services. We definitely had problems."
The relation of mutual aid to political practice came more into question in 2012, after the
occupation was over, with two projects, Strike Debt and Occupy Sandy. Strike Debt raised money for a
"Rolling Jubilee," buying up medical debt at a fraction of its value and then telling the debtors that it
was canceled. Occupy Sandy was a massive response to the hurricane of October, 2012, the worst on
record in New York, which left thousands homeless or trapped in homes without electricity and with
no way to care for themselves. In the days after the hurricane, Occupy recruited tens of thousands of
volunteers to supply relief aid. Both the Rolling Jubilee and Occupy Sandy were intended as "mutual
23
aid as direct action," but some in the movement questioned whether providing relief, however
necessary in an emergency, was really an appropriate political project. Recipients often did not see it
politically. Some Occupy Sandy volunteers came into conflict with the communities where they were
working; others were accused (by other volunteers) of seeking personal reward through jobs or
consulting contracts.
5. Defiance
Simply ordinary people turned this government [out] by writing articles, holding speeches,
noise demonstrations, bonfires, car horns, direct action, civil disobedience and sabotage.
--Aftaka, Icelandic anarchist collective, January 2009
Direct action is an important part of the anarchist tradition. Understood broadly, it means any
action in which people aim to resolve their problems directly rather than relying on others, in particular
on the state. Only some anarchists practiced "propaganda of the deed," and only for a short period,
engaging in acts of violence--often political assassination--in the hope of sparking a broad revolt
(Graeber, 2009: 222-224; Guerin, 1970: 74).
Sometimes direct action was interpreted broadly in OWS. Marisa Holmes said, "Direct action
is definitely a key part of the anarchist tradition. All of these are forms of direct action: disrupting,
blockading, just like organizing food is a form of direct action." Matt Presto went further: direct action
means "refusing to pay taxes, sabotage, striking, and boycotting" (Holmes and Presto, 2012).
But direct action took on a more specific meaning, of militant and street protests (Graeber,
2009: 203-204). Defiance means more than autonomy, both in principle and in practice. Autonomy
suggests withdrawal and ignoring official institutions; defiance means confronting and exposing them.
Acting confrontationally in defiance of political authorities has remained a hallmark of anarchist
political protest--and occurred regularly in Occupy Wall Street, in almost daily marches on Wall Street,
bigger marches recruiting supporters citywide, and the ongoing occupation of the park itself.
This defiance came to be embodied in the Direct Action Working Group. DA, as it was known,
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organized many of these actions. Eventually it was authorized by the general assembly to approve of
actions on its behalf: a subgroup would organize an action and ask DA for its sanction.
These actions led to regular confrontations with the police. They were often deliberately
provocative, creating situations where an excessive police response was predictable (if not justified).
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has a standard procedure for dealing with protest that Alex
S. Vitale calls "command and control," impeding protesters from assembling and moving freely, and
responding with violence when they do (Vitale, 2005: 283). This police behavior goads protesters into
challenging them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by producing the very disorder it is supposed to
prevent.
OWS in turn invited confrontation by refusing to negotiate with the police or seek permits for
their actions. Presto said there were two reasons for the refusal to negotiate: first, a political reason:
"By appointing someone to negotiate with the police, that automatically legitimizes the power
structure. By not having that relation we reject them. Second, strategically, it was incredibly difficult
for the police to evict us, particularly early on, because they had no point person to talk to" (Holmes
and Presto, 2012). Marches without permits were legally required to remain on sidewalks. Police
regularly punished minor violations. The ubiquitous Guy Fawkes masks worn by sympathizers of the
Anonymous hackers' movement, which violated an ancient ordinance forbidding the wearing of masks
in public, often drew summonses.
Pepper-spraying, violent arrests, and other incidents of police abuse drew the attention of the
media, and media accounts of excessive use of force by the police aroused public sympathy for the
protesters. Videos showing clearly that these attacks were not only excessively violent but unprovoked
went viral on the internet. Some showed quite vividly the victims' agonized reaction to pepper spray.
They produced a tremendous outpouring of sympathy for the protest and repudiation of police brutality.
Conflict between occupiers and the police took a different form on the occupation site than in
25
marches in the streets. The peculiar legal status of Zuccotti Park as a privately owned public space
(Hammond, 2013: 514) meant that the police did not have the same authority as over public streets and
sidewalks, so their response was more restrained and less consistent. Nevertheless, the police twice
prepared to evict protesters. The first time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the police
would clear the park on October 14 so it could be cleaned. In response, thousands of OWS supporters
showed up at six o'clock in the morning to defend the park. In the face of the large crowd, the police
decided to call off the eviction.
On November 15, a month later, however, the police returned, this time unannounced, invaded
the park in the middle of the night, and dragged the occupiers out. A large contingent of police officers
secured the area around the park, keeping out reporters and legal observers. They arrested some two
hundred people in the park and the surrounding streets. They gathered up individual and communal
property, much of which, including many books, computers, and other equipment, was destroyed. An
exhaustive study by a Fordham-NYU Law Schools team documented 130 incidents of "aggressive and
excessive police use of force" including bodily force, weapons, and restraint of detained persons
throughout the occupation (Knuckey et al., 2012: 72).
Occupiers forged a culture which took pride in confronting the police and being arrested.
Acting nonviolently for the most part, they were eager to expose the corruption and repressiveness of
the police and court system, and (perhaps not incidentally) demonstrate their heroic will to resist.
Collective participation in acts of transgression gives participants a sense of power. It ratifies the belief
in their rights, the conviction that those rights are being trampled on, and the determination to assert
them. Justin Wedes, asked if the confrontation with the police was productive, answered, "Absolutely.
It served to dramatize the tension a lot of Americans were feeling at the time: these people don't
represent us, they serve the banks and the government."
Arrest and the subsequent proceedings confirmed for them the repressive nature of the society
26
that they were protesting. Shawn Carrié described his arrest as "liberating." He continued, "Some
people have said it almost got too glorified to be arrested. But the fact that [the police] are protecting
elite interests in this country was very clear. . . . You get arrested, you knew that was a risk all the time,
but it would be okay because you had the National Lawyers Guild [to give legal assistance], you had
people to get arrested and be in jail with, sing and chant. Being arrested is an incredibly dehumanizing
process; but with other people, with your head held high, it is a very empowering experience."
OWS benefited enormously in public perception from the police repression. But, as I have
argued elsewhere (Hammond, 2013: 518-19), relying on confrontation with authorities to generate
sympathy can distract attention from the larger goals of social justice and make treatment of protesters
by police an issue rather than police abuse in the context of structural abuses engendered by the
capitalist system, focusing on the oppression of the occupiers rather than the everyday police abuse of
minorities and the poor.
These five tenets constitute a reconstruction of the anarchism that I have inferred among the
occupiers. There were other issues that I have not dealt with here. I have not discussed territoriality,
the relation of the movement to a particular space, because it is not particularly related to anarchism
and because I have discussed it at length elsewhere (Hammond, 2013).
There were two other issues more closely related to the core values of anarchism that led to
conflicts that were never resolved within the movement: antioppression and nonviolence. Everyone
paid lip service to combating racism and patriarchy. But the movement was largely white and males
took the most visible roles. The marginalization of women and people of color brought conflict at
several points. A draft of the Declaration of the Occupation was challenged in September by feminists
and people of color because it spoke of groups "formerly divided," implying that divisions had been
overcome. The draft was revised with the phrase omitted, but the issue arose throughout the
occupation and beyond (Bray, 2013: 94-96; Schneider, 2013; Maharawal, 2011 and 2012).
27
Anarchists have long debated both the definition of violence and its permissibility as a political
tactic (Graeber, 2009: 212). The same debates arose in OWS. Some believed in nonviolence as a
principle and wanted the occupation as a whole to agree, but even the definition of nonviolence was
contentious. For some, but not all, it meant refraining not only from injuring people but also from
damaging property. Nonviolence (undefined) was endorsed as a principle in the General Assembly's
Statement of Autonomy. But others endorsed "diversity of tactics," a term which came to mean that
violent actions, however defined, were acceptable under some conditions. This issue too remained
contentious, especially after some marchers in an Occupy Oakland demonstration broke some windows
in the winter. In New York, Chris Hedges condemned their behavior as "a cancer in Occupy," to which
David Graeber replied that to condemn violence by demonstrators who were more often its victims
than its perpetrators was to fall into the trap set by authorities and do their policing work for them. The
New York occupiers tended toward nonviolence, but the debate continued (Bray, 2013: 209-47;
Epstein, 2012; Hedges, 2012; Graeber, 2012b).
The Social Bases of Occupy's Anarchism
OWS's anarchism is consistent with the social and generational experience of many occupiers.
Though the movement hoped that the vast majority of the population would identify with an
undifferentiated 99%, most activists came from a particular segment, whose growth itself reflected the
polarization of the economy. The growing inequality of wealth and income that consigns many to
working harder and for longer hours but for stagnating wages has also spawned a growing "precariat," a
class of people, mostly young and many well educated, without stable employment. Global shifts in
capitalism have driven large numbers into this class around the world since the 1970s; its members
populated the protests of 2011 in North Africa and southern Europe as well as the United States
(Achcar, 2012; Barley and Kunda, 2004; Kalleberg, 2009; Mason, 2012).
Many such young people in the US have experienced sporadic employment or longterm
28
unemployment despite educational credentials acquired at great cost. Many assumed a crushing
personal debt load and found themselves indentured to an unforgiving credit system with loans they are
unable to repay and are legally prevented from discharging in bankruptcy (Hammond, 2012b; Lauff et
al., 2014; Milkman, 2012). They are trained to work in fields like media, information technology, and
higher education, where work is increasingly available only for a short term or on a part-time or
freelance basis.
The effects of longterm economic changes were compounded by the economic crisis of 2008.
Though economists declared the recession over a year later, unemployment has remained high,
especially for new jobseekers. According to Graeber, "Young people were [the] most dramatic
victims" of the Great Recession (2013: 71). Unemployment in 2011 was almost twice as high for labor
force members under 25 years old as for those 25 and over (U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012: 7).
Other young people, with little education and few skills, found low-end service jobs, with
poverty wages and no security. Some of them abandoned the labor market or never ventured into it,
but dropped out definitively. Some came to the occupation in New York from elsewhere after quitting
jobs or enduring lengthy spells of unemployment. They then devoted themselves full time to the
occupation where food was free and lodging was beneath the open skies. After the eviction they turned
to couchsurfing, hanging out with friends and living off the land.
Young people have often been the main recruits to social movements--their attachments to
family and work are weak, and they are more receptive to calls for social change. But they are even
more susceptible to joining protests today than in more ordinary times, because economic crisis has
swelled their numbers and magnified their grievances. Their irregular employment or flexible work
schedules make them more available for full-time activism. Changing sexual mores also change their
horizons. People form longterm relations much later in life than their elders did, if at all; not forming
stable households, they do not depend on a family structure, nor do they have the obligation to support
29
a family (Schneider, 2013: 74-75; Klinenberg, 2012).
Members of previous generations expected to find stable, reasonably well paid employment
with security, and many actually succeeded. A family with one earner could live well, with security
guaranteed for the working class by union contracts and their spillover effects in nonunionized firms,
and for the middle class by norms that militated against firing. A more or less effective safety net
(Social Security, public assistance, and workers' compensation) provided some security to those who
were outside the labor force. That generation therefore had a somewhat justified confidence in the
efficacy of large institutions. They relied either on unions or on secure employment in large
institutions to assure their future; they counted on government to protect these institutions.
Leftists of that earlier generation gravitated to socialism or at least to the welfare state. Though
opposed to the capitalist economy and the capitalist state, they envisioned a socialist system lodged in
big, institutionalized government and big, institutionalized workplaces (freed of the capitalist taint).
Younger people have no such expectation. As short-term profit imperatives came to rule in
capitalist firms, a key management tool was downsizing. As the labor force shifted away from highly
unionized industries and capital waged a relentless war on labor, unions no longer guaranteed a living
wage or job security. Precarious employment became common, and many, newly entering the labor
force, never knew the stable employment of the past. The two-earner family became the norm, family
living standards stagnated, and unemployment was an imminent threat to many.
The conservative trend in US politics brought austerity for the poor; deregulated the
corporations, especially the banks; transferred responsibility for paying for education to the student and
defined education as a personal investment in human capital rather than a right or a social benefit.
Both major parties were complicit in this transformation, which put the political system at the service
of the rich and was exacerbated in the 2008 financial crisis in which all influential political players
supported a bailout of the financial system but not of the social system. Many who were to become
30
occupiers supported Obama enthusiastically in the election of 2008. Finding only disappointment in
his presidency, they were no more likely to hope for political change than for individual success.
Today's young workers have little expectation of prosperity through employment or social
protection. The collapse of unionism and of welfare provision leaves them to meet their needs
independent of the support of a state, through solidary groups and autonomous organizations. In other
words, anarchism appears to nourish hopes where governmental and private institutions no longer offer
any promise.
Their experience informs their vision of social transformation. They reject the materialist
values that their formerly expected security supported. They want to avoid entanglements with
bureaucratic organizations, the corporation, the state, and the labor unions that defended some workers
under the older conditions. "Their concern with debt and a stolen future" (Graeber, 2013: 69) drive
them to challenge those institutions and to take extreme measures to express that challenge.
Many occupiers, on top of their precarious livelihood, were attracted to anarchist thought, were
familiar with anarchist classics, and drew on those classics for the design of what they came to see as a
model society in the park. The anarchist model, particularly in its communal aspects, seems
particularly appropriate to the life of the precariously employed, just as the bureaucratic trade union
was for the factory workers of an earlier generation.
How OWS Matters
The tenets of anarchism determined OWS's political intervention. Specifically, three of these
tenets in combination--horizontalism, prefiguration, and autonomy--meant that the movement was
more focused on the present than the future and more concerned with its internal organization in the
small physical space of Zuccotti Park than with achieving social and economic change. Together they
meant that OWS did little to combat the ills of US society directly, even though that was its ostensible
purpose.
31
Practices I have called anarchistic gave the occupation a powerful impact on those who
participated. Living out these tenets was an exhilarating experience--and brought many participants
into the anarchist fold. But it also left many others out. OWS claimed to represent the 99%, but in fact
it closed itself off from the bulk of its intended constituency. Most people cannot participate in a
political activity of this sort. At a minimum, because of time constraints, but even more because they
do not share its underlying political orientation even if they agree on issues. In Gitlin's phrase, Occupy
"thrived on a sense of beautiful marginality" (2012: 149) as it attempted to create extraordinary social
relations within an exclusive group.
Many critics chastised the occupy movement for abstaining from practical politics to pursue its
announced goals. As mentioned, Bill Moyers urged two occupiers to emulate the civil rights
movement. In June 2012 the liberal political comedian Bill Maher called on Occupy to "move off the
streets and into the voting booth" (Maher, 2012). In his book Occupy Nation, Gitlin shows some
sympathy for the movement's utopian aspirations, but on the whole criticizes it for its "process
fetishism" and says that its "tactics threatened to overshadow the movement's ideological thrust." He
reserves his praise for those activists who pushed to make it more pragmatic and work the levers of
"normal politics" (2012: 44, 186; Gitlin, 2013: 228).
The movement eschewed what others regard as practical politics both because of participants'
convictions and because of its organizational logic. To have focused more on immediate political
impact would have violated its principles and strained against its style of operation. To call on it to
take on electoral campaigns or political reform was to ask it to be a different movement.
Most participants were attracted to it initially by the platform of opposition to corporate power
and economic inequality. They might well have been ready to join a movement oriented more
pragmatically to institutional politics if one had been on offer. It is impossible to know how effective
such a movement would have been. But it seems inherently unlikely that a more conventional reform-
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oriented movement would have had the temerity to occupy Wall Street (or nearby) in the first place or
would have attracted such a popular following. And it was the occupation that drew the attention of a
fascinated world and made the public, the media, and even the government take notice of escalating
economic inequality in the US class structure and think about ameliorating it. Practical political efforts
to remedy inequality have multiplied enormously since the occupation.
To show the difference Occupy made, I performed a simple test, not definitive but surely
indicative, of the degree to which Occupy discourse displaced Tea Party discourse. A Lexis-Nexis
search for the terms "budget deficit" and "inequality" in New York Times articles reporting from the
United States in July, 2011 and January, 2012, revealed that "budget deficit" made 186 appearances in
July and fell to 91 in January, while "inequality" rose from 30 appearances in July to 108 in January.
And in the next two years, the issues of income inequality and regulation of monopoly banks
made significant headway. The Dodd-Frank Act became law. Elizabeth Warren was elected senator
from Massachusetts in 2012; Bill de Blasio won the race for mayor of New York and Kshama Sawant
for the Seattle City Council in 2013 on platforms denouncing inequality. Minimum wage workers in
fast food and retail sales have gone on strike to win economic gains. Several states and cities have
legislated increases in the minimum wage. President Obama (2013) has declared inequality "the
defining challenge of our time."
None of these changes occurred because OWS mobilized to achieve them (although offshoots
of Occupy have intervened in the regulatory process set in place by the Dodd-Frank Act [dePillis,
2013] and actively supported the fast food workers' campaign). Instead, Occupy molded the climate of
opinion around the issues and created political space for others, from members of Congress to
minimum wage workers, to act and achieve their goals.
Social change has often been fostered by an organizationally diverse social movement sector
that includes different movement organizations pursuing the same goals but with different ideological
33
and tactical orientations. Playing good cop-bad cop, they can be more successful than either of them
alone could be. OWS opened the discussion of economic inequality and control of the financial sector,
and one could argue that its anarchism was essential to building the movement that achieved that; a
more conventional movement seeking political pressure would not have had that impact.
Many observers, including myself, have no hesitation in attributing the change in political
discourse to OWS. Serious discussions of inequality in the media and the public have multiplied
exponentially since 2011. The electoral victories, regulatory reform, and minimum wage struggles did
not come about because Occupy mobilized in their favor, as Maher exhorted them to do, but because
Occupy opened up space for these issues that institutional political actors could fill.
Journalists unambiguously credit the rising attention to economic inequality in the US to the
Occupy movement, at least one calling it the movement's "one indisputable triumph" (Kornacki, 2011).
Even more tellingly, in 2012, 2013, and 2014 inequality was identified as the top political risk in the
world at the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the international capitalist class and its
political sycophants in Davos, Switzerland. An article in the online publication Business Insider
Australia about its presence in the discussions at the WEF was headlined, "How Occupy Wall Street
Won" (Lopez, 2014).
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