“We are the 99 percent” movement opens up a new historical moment

“Occupy Wall Street/We are the 99 percent” has announced that “A new uncompromising movement against NYPD’s notorious Stop & Frisk program began yesterday [Friday] as hundreds of demonstrators marched from the Harlem State Office Building to Harlem’s 28th precinct. At the station, Cornel West, author and Princeton professor, Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Rev. Stephen Phelps, interim senior minister of Riverside Church, and dozens of others were arrested in an act of non-violent civil disobedience. Among those arrested and protesting was a large contingent from downtown’s Occupy Wall Street.”

This extension of the OWS protest is an important step in broadening the campaign. An “Occupy Harlem” protest is due to start next week, and if successful will not only challenge the unconstitutional police harassment experienced by African-American and Latino youth in New York, but also involve these youth with OWS’s struggle against bank control of the political system. This would be a huge breakthrough for the movement.

OWS’s direct action tactics have also re-energized the unions, not at the leadership level, which is still oriented to the Democratic leadership, but at the more militant base. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that on Friday “dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters joined the picket line outside Sotheby’s, the Manhattan auction house, where 42 unionized art handlers have been locked out in a labor dispute since July 29. ‘Walking around in a circle outside that building is not an easy job,’ said Jason Ide, the 30-year-old president of Teamsters Local 814, which represents the handlers and commercial movers. ‘When they show up, our guys feel a real kick because they care’.”

The reason the protests resonate with so many different social groups is because of the long-term deterioration in people’s living standards which is now accompanied by an acceleration of job layoffs and increased poverty since the bank crash of 2008. This is grudgingly verified by Businessweek, “Income and wealth inequality in America have been growing for decades with little public outcry. The catalyst for the [OWS] movement now is that during the worst financial crisis since the Depression, there is a perception that Wall Street and the wealthy were taken care of while average folks suffer. That isn’t a fringe view. … One of the critics of the Wall Street demonstrations cited a survey showing that three-quarters of the protesters favored higher taxes on the rich. In major U.S. media polls – by the Wall Street Journal/NBC News and Bloomberg News/ Washington Post – two-thirds of the public agree.”

This is very different from the Tea Party whose support from conservative whites stemmed from blaming government for their loss of privilege. The televised search for a Republican presidential candidate reveals the Tea Party’s shrinking base by its increasing extremism and denial of human empathy for the sick, gay soldiers, and unemployed. The vicious demonization of OWS by Tea Party spokespeople like Glenn Beck reflects the fact that their support relied on a monopoly of a populist rhetorical space.

The mass support for the Occupy protests is not going to fade away, since a much greater banking crisis is on the horizon. Bank failures in Europe and the euro’s convulsions threaten to hit Wall Street hard, and in defiance of regulatory bodies Bank of America has moved some of its toxic exposure to the European debt crisis from its subsidiary Merrill Lynch to the main Bank of America account where they are insured by the FDIC and ultimately become the liability of the taxpayer.

At the same time, the government is paralyzed by the rightward ideological push of the Republican Tea Partiers, which Obama’s administration has implicitly accepted by setting up the bipartisan “Gang of Six” to agree on a $1.5 trillion reduction in the federal budget which will further contract the economy leading to further job losses, and dismantle the social safety net. This in turn will draw many more into support for the OWS movement’s confrontation of the political system.

The historical moment we are in is a different one from the period of resistance to union-busting laws in Wisconsin, which was the precursor to the OWS movement, even though only a few months have passed since then. At that time, the Tea Party Republicans appeared ascendant by using their control of the state legislature to steamroller through their agenda. The union leaders led the reaction against them which focused on reversing state laws, although this was extended by the occupation of the state Capitol building in Madison.

Democratic legislators and the graduate students’ union in Wisconsin led the occupation from the beginning, and it was this occupation of public space that became the focus for large demonstrations of support. The occupiers organized themselves with the same kind of horizontal democracy as OWS, although the mass movement still considered Wisconsin Democrats its leadership. The defection of 14 state senators to Illinois was a form of direct action within the political system that denied governor Walker a quorum on his anti-union budget bill, and gave validation to mass actions in Madison and around the state.

However, the union-led movement had difficulty connecting with other struggles in Wisconsin against bank foreclosures and other social issues because of their focus on restoring collective bargaining. Despite these limitations, in a state divided between Democratic-voting cities and mainly Republican rural areas and Milwaukee suburbs, Wisconsin Democrats showed energy and commitment to an election recall campaign which succeeded in reducing Walker’s senate majority to one, and are set on recalling Walker himself next year. The success of the “Occupy Wall Street/We are the 99 percent” movement is now rebounding back on Wisconsin and “Occupy” protests are springing up around the state and taking up social issues on a much broader front.

This will become a problem for the Democratic party leadership nationally, since they are heavily indebted to Wall Street, but on the other hand must respond to the mass movement (particularly at the local level). The divisions which will inevitably manifest themselves within the party open up opportunities to replace corporate Democrats with progressives who support the aims of OWC, which would be a parallel expression of the occupation movement.

The “We are the 99 percent” movement Brings Good Things To Life

A story in the Washington Post today features the support the Occupy Wall Street movement is getting from unions in New York. Although the horizontal democracy of the OWC is very different from the structure of traditional labor organizations, they have been brought together by a common aim of defying the power of corporations and the super-rich.

“Labor groups are mobilizing to provide office space, meeting rooms, photocopying services, legal help, food and other necessities to the protesters. … And in return, Occupy activists are pitching in to help unions ratchet up action that targets several New York firms involved in labor disputes … Occupy activists have helped union workers disrupt the rarified environs of Sotheby’s art auction house, as part of a contract dispute between the firm and about 40 of its art handlers. …  Jason Ide, president of Teamsters Local 814, which represents the art handlers, said the Occupy tactics surprised and inspired him and his members — so much so that the workers have become regulars at Zuccotti Park, the Wall Street plaza that has been occupied by protesters for weeks.”

All kinds of people have been inspired by OWC’s stand against Wall Street and its backers. According to the OWC’s website, “people from every corner of the United States have sent donations of tarps, home baked pies, hand-knit mittens, and pizzas — with personal notes of solidarity and support.” They have even started a new website featuring some of the notes, like this one: “Thank you for your representation! I’m a fulltime mom and nursing student with 3 part-time jobs. My president calls that American. I call it slavery. My mission is no cold ears on Wall Street! Let me know if you need anything more. Jessica Rainbow – knitters for the 99 percent.”

What is the reason for the breadth of this support? Unlike the anti-globalization protests of the 1990s, which as Naomi Klein pointed out took place at the peak of a frenzied economic boom, the context of today’s occupations is a rapid reduction of living standards caused by the economic recession which immediately followed the 2008 banking crash. The bailed-out banks are squeezing the working and middle class hard through student loan debt, mortgage debt, and credit card debt.

David Graeber’s piece in Naked Capitalism on Wednesday had this interesting observation: “Why would a protest by educated youth strike such a chord across America—in a way that it probably wouldn’t have in 1967, or even 1990? Clearly, it has much to do with the financialization of capital. It may well be the case by now that most of Wall Street’s profits are no longer being extracted indirectly, through the wage system, at all, but taken directly from the pockets of ordinary Americans. … given the fact that interest payments alone take up between 15-17% of household income, a figure that does not include student loans, and that penalty fees on bank and credit card accounts can often double the amount one would otherwise pay, it would not be at all surprising if at least one dollar out of every five an American earns over the course of her lifetime is now likely to end up in Wall Street’s coffers in one way or another.”

He goes on to speculate that through the fusion of financial and political power, capitalism in the U.S. today has taken on some of the characteristics of feudalism through the direct political-legal extraction of wealth, using extra-economic as well as economic coercion. However, Americans won’t allow themselves to be forced into debt peonage.

The resonance of the “Occupy Wall Street/We are the 99 percent” message throughout the heartland indicates that we are in a new historical moment, different even from the one that sparked the struggle in Wisconsin just a few months ago. The ascendance of the Republican right and the corporate Democrats has been effectively challenged.  They and the financial elites suddenly sense the reality of the class war they have so often invoked as a metaphor.

“We Are the 99 Percent:” Globalized Crisis, Local Response

A common theme has emerged in the mainstream media’s reporting on the “OWS/We are the 99 percent” protests: that it is part of an international movement against global capitalism. The campaigns in different countries are merged into an amalgam of discontents, an international protest against economic distress.

The problem with this narrative is that it fails to distinguish between the obvious similarities of the rhetoric and tactics of the protests, and the social movements behind them, which are specific to each country.

This homogenizing narrative has the effect of  neutralizing the symbolic power of the OWS movement in our national dialogue. OWS is about Wall Street in New York and all it represents, and – while there may be many analogous streets in Spain, Cairo, Rome, London and so forth – what has captured the imagination of Americans are the protesters occupying places like Zuccotti Plaza near Wall Street, Dewey Square in Boston, and LaSalle & Jackson in downtown Chicago. These are places we know and which are part of our local and national imaginaries.

The narrative is clearly shown in the press reports of Saturday’s day of action. The London Independent discerned the start of a global upheaval: “Protests against corporate greed, executive excess and public austerity began to gel into the beginnings of a worldwide movement yesterday as tens of thousands marched in scores of cities. The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest, which started in Canada and spread to the US, and the long-running Spanish ‘Indignant’ and Greek anti-cuts demonstrations coalesced on a day that saw marches or occupations in 82 countries.”

Likewise, the New York Times saw a protest tsunami: “Buoyed by the longevity of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Manhattan, a wave of protests swept across Asia, the Americas and Europe over the weekend, with hundreds and in some cases thousands of people expressing discontent with the economic tides in marches, rallies and occasional clashes with the police. … Yet despite the difference in language, landscape and scale, the protests were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor.”

The Guardian reported: “Protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and the ‘Indignants’ in Spain have spread to cities around the world;” and the Washington Post concurred: “Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York, protesters [in London] entered a second day of demonstrations Sunday …”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius presented a lengthy justification of this homogenizing approach last week. He wrote: “What’s intriguing about the eruption of Occupy Wall Street is that it’s so similar to other populist movements that are demanding change in nearly every major region of the world. You can’t help but wonder if we aren’t seeing, as a delayed reaction to the financial crisis of 2008, a kind of ‘global spring’ of discontent.

“Obviously, circumstances differ: The anti-corporate activists gathered in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park have a different agenda than the demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, or this past summer’s rioting street protesters in Britain and Greece, or the anti-corruption marchers in New Delhi. … But the protesters do share some basics: rejection of traditional political elites; a belief that ‘globalization’ benefits the rich more than the masses; anger about intertwined business and political corruption; and the connectedness and empowerment fostered by Facebook and other social media.”

The common core of similarities that Ignatius lists doesn’t tell us much more than that their rhetoric is the same and they use similar methods of communication. By detaching them from their specifics, he can even detect an anti-elite commonality between the “Occupy” movement and the Tea Party. His conclusion is to attribute all the protests to an abstract moral concern. “It’s a stretch, perhaps, to look for shared themes in such disparate countries,” he concedes. “But these movements seem to have a common indignation toward leaders who are failing to maintain social justice along with global economic change. That’s certainly true in America, where the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street both rage against a financial elite that stumbled into a ruinous recession — and then got bailed out by a Washington elite that’s in hock to special interests.” Ignatius uses “Rage against the elite” as a shorthand to obfuscate the differences between the OWC/We Are the 99 Percent and Tea Party in the national context, and then blur both of these in an international matrix.

The difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party was made abundantly clear on Thursday night, when local politicians responded to the many phone calls of their constituents by pressurizing the owners of Zuccotti Plaza to call off their planned “clean-up” of the park. The Tea Party never had such popular support in New York, and it never raged against any financial elites: it raged against the Obama administration on behalf of its constituency of white, older, Republican voters and the super-rich who funded it. And to turn the international narrative on its head, we do not see thousands of people rising up around the world to support the ideologically driven Tea Party.

Without losing sight of international solidarity, it has to be stressed that “OWC/We are the 99 percent” is a specifically American and pluralist response to the globalized financial crisis. Americans of all ages, races and genders face the dismantling of the social contract and the breaking of promises of a better life. We have grown up expecting government to be of, by, and for the people, and are enraged by a political system that has rewarded bankers for fraud and punished the public with an economic recession. A typical sign at the occupation says: “I’m here because I can’t afford my own lobbyists.” That defines the opposition to the Wall Street elite’s political domination better than any journalistic analysis.

Bloomberg plans eviction of “We are the 99 percent” movement

photo: Chronicle of Higher Education

Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD have announced their intention to sweep Liberty Square of protesters in the early hours of Friday morning on the grounds that the square has become unsanitary and needs cleaning. This is a transparent ruse to shut down the occupation and limit the protests, in the name of asserting the private property rights of the park’s owners over the public right to free assembly.

The same rationale was followed in Boston where the police made mass arrests to allegedly defend private shrubs in a public park, although the conservatory association who manage the park had agreed to let the protesters stay.

A statement by Occupy Wall Street said: “Bloomberg says that the park will be open for public usage following the cleaning, but with a notable caveat: Occupy Wall Street participants must follow the ‘rules’. NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that they will move in to clear us and we will not be allowed to take sleeping bags, tarps, personal items or gear back into the park. This is it—this is their attempt to shut down #OWS for good.”

Occupy Wall Street responded by calling for a mass turnout of support at midnight to defend the occupation from Bloomberg’s eviction. In the meantime they launched a major site clean-up themselves, some members scrubbing the granite stones of the park on their hands and knees.

Whatever happens on Friday morning, police intervention will inevitably swell public support for the “We are the 99 percent” movement, because behind the protesters are masses of people who are connected to them by the realities of their lives.

Eliot Spitzer’s assessment of the movement can be found in Slate: “Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center. We have moved beyond the one-dimensional conversation about how much and where to cut the deficit. Questions more central to the social fabric of our nation have returned to the heart of the political debate. By forcing this new discussion, OWS has made most of the other participants in our politics—who either didn’t want to have this conversation or weren’t able to make it happen—look pretty small.”

In that connection, take a look at the sign in the photo above: “What do you want OUR government to stand for? How do we secure our future?” It’s a call for an open-ended debate on the role of government, but it also expresses a confident certainty that the government can be made to represent we the people, “the 99 percent,” and that we therefore have an obligation to decide what it should stand for. It asserts that our collective actions, and nothing else, can determine our future.

The experiences of the occupation have strengthened this certainty and given confidence to many of the 99 percent who had given up hope. That’s why Bloomberg regards it as so dangerous.

The logic of capital accumulation has created a crisis situation which cannot be resolved without a large portion of capital being destroyed in order that accumulation can continue. But owners of capital are manoeuvring and fighting among themselves to make sure it’s someone else’s capital, not their own, that gets written off. At the same time, the American people are aroused and angry and won’t accept being reduced to debt peonage. Huge class battles are in the offing.

By its open-endedness, the question the sign asks raises the possibility of an answer which would involve bringing down the super-rich and wealthy who control the political system. But that’s something which may have to be discovered by historical experience of struggle, rather than from a textbook solution.