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The word “occupy” is a transitive verb. It is never a noun. If one is not actively doing something, one can’t occupy it. Conversely, and maybe more importantly, thinking about occupying something is an act of thinking not an act of occupying.
This came to me after reading this nice diary by athena1 and this headline “Sandy Update: FEMA Sending Trailers to Victims; Occupy Sandy Asking Amazon to Waive Shipping Fees for Occupy Sandy Registry Orders” by PW. In a moment of self amused literalcy, I thought, “How does one occupy a hurricane?” That’s when it dawned on me that when “occupying” stop being an action and became a symbol, a thing, it fell, or got pushed, into the political abyss.
The word Occupy never received an utterance in this year’s campaigns or debates. Do you think the candidates might have been asked about it had the debates happened last October? By “Super Tuesday” in February, OWS and its offspring had been completely crushed. 99% became a slogan co-opted by faux progressive establishment candidates. Mittens could get caught on tape calling 47% of Americans “lazy moochers” and still get 48% of the popular vote.
OWS miscalculated when it made it easy for people to protest. When the call went out to occupy financial districts all across the country, people came out in the tens of thousands. The idea that you could be part of a larger movement with the added convenience of never having to leave the proximity of the comforts of home made participation much more appealing. It also left the movement fragmented and easy to crush one by one.
The establishment calculated correctly that aggressive tactics would drive many of the occupiers’ right back to their couches leaving only the hard core professional activists in the encampments in the smaller places like here in Pittsburgh. They also correctly calculated that aggressive tactics would keep the vast majority of people who are conflict adverse from actively joining the movement.
OWS would have found it easier to maintain its momentum had there been only one, two or three massive encampments, maybe one in NY, one in San Francisco and one in Chicago. People would have been more willing to stick it out had they traveled a long distance and had to get back home. The more you put on the line, the more likely you are to push back harder.
Not to diminish the huge sacrifice of the people who occupied through the cold winter months and took the beatings, jail time and pepper spray in order to bring income disparity to the national consciousness. However, that doesn’t change the fact that OWS still lost, and the re-election of Obama proves it. OWS is a response to Obama’s actions. Obama won another four years to pursue the same inequitable policies. It is more likely that he will more vigorously pursue austerity now that the specter of re-election is gone. Not even the most optimistic can call that a win.
48 Comments
:)
I’m just going to leave this here:
Who Is Oakland: Anti-Oppression Activism, the Politics of Safety, and State Co-optation
… And why Amazon? Are there no local businesses?
I don’t know how they’ll be handling direct dollar contributions, but if you’ve had a chance to check out the registries I think you’ll see the scope of what’s been donated, and in such a short time, and geared directly to what is needed, by using this method.
This is the link for the Occupy Sandy registry, but there’s another for SandyNJ and I think I saw that there were others as well.
was reply to shekissesfrogs @ 1
I thought from the beginning that Flash Occupations would have been more effective, and less vulnerable, than encampments. I would like to have seen the emphasis of Occupations be on education rather than on protest. It qwold have been great to see huge outdoor fora, speeches, panels, seminars, speak-outs, to see scholars, artists, clergy and whomever coalsesce around a new progressive movement.
But it hasn’t happened. As to O, Barack is his name and austerity is his game. For millions of Americans. And unimaginable riches for a few. He is going to cause more suffering than any US president has in history. No one else will even come close. But the Democratic Party and its surrogates continue to suck up to him and carry his water. It’s a waking nightmare and it’s true.
If Romney had been elected, would that have disproved it?
As stated in the Declaration of the Occupation of NYC, Occupy was a response to corporate control, and a need to come together in a public space to define new solutions. Although different Occupy groups and individual Occupiers got involved in local politics, convention protests, support for getting money out of politics, etc., among other activities, Occupy wasn’t a response to Obama’s actions and, didn’t have electoral politics as its goal.
In order to assess the impact to date, you would need to look at some of the broader initiatives (Occupy Our Homes, Occupy the SEC, Occupy Debt/Rolling Jubilee, Occupy Sandy) as well as what has become of Occupy groups and participants, both those that still function within an Occupy identity and those who have leveraged the Occupy experience into other types of organizing and networking.
In my opinion, the impact of Occupy is yet to be determined.
Wow! After reading this post, I can say I haven’t read such a sneering dismissal of Occupy outside the mainstream media. Is that what the author is angling for, a job in the mainstream media?
The only line missing is, “But what do the protesters waaaant?”
Nice catch on the language, amghru.
Occupy, as happened to the word freedom, got turned from an act into a thing, into a commodity, into something else to be consumed. It matters far less what I say and consume than what I do. And anything that costs me almost nothing, is likely worth almost nothing as well.
“OWS miscalculated when it made it easy for people to protest.”
Indeed.
Fucking A, medicinecat; can’t even imagine where to begin the counter-arguments and facts. I’ll leave as the smoke pours out of my ears…
Or: ‘Why didn’t OWS endorse or run candidates??? Where is their list of demands???”
Mainstream media currently re-assessing:
NY Times
SF Chronicle
Boston Herald
I would like to apologize for my earlier outburst, amghru. Your post was just the straw that broke this camel’s back at the end of a long day.
Please let me say that your post ignores so much OWS history, including but not limited to the facts that:
Every encampment was shut down by the militarized police, and most often violently.
There must by now be pending cases against OWS dissidents worth millions of dollars in fine, and potentially god knows how many multiple decades in jail sentences.
There are many members of GAs nationally *and globally* working on alternative models of business, horizontal democracy, spin-off labor movements, community banking, food banks, alternative financial restructuring and re-regulation, foreclosure stopping and aid…and many other parallel movements inspired at their cores by the democracy movement.
Ignorance of all these things I can understand, but writing a post trashing the movement *without knowing* is not right, imo. It reminds me of the folks here who laugh at the dearth of votes that third party candidates received in the election, but fail to see that their OBomba votes are part of the statistics!
Please do some homework, and go to any of the Occupy sites to see what events are still cookin’. Better yet, arrange some flashmobs in your area, and make a pamphlet explaining OWS and the 99%/1% meme.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the title of your diary. And I am really trying very hard to square my Occupy experience with your analysis and I can find very little common ground.
As someone who has been in the thick of Occupy for the past year, here’s what I think: The main reason that tens of thousands of people came out to participate is precisely because it happened in their town, no matter how big or small their town was. Setting aside the massive numbers of people who continue to take the time to travel and attend major actions in cities like NY, Chicago and Oakland, your suggestion that the encampments and protests should have only been held in a few places seems patently ridiculous. You think we should have made the movement less accessible to the people most affected by financial and social injustice? Really? The brilliance of those first few months of Occupy was that it was apolitical, not part of some existing organization or group or club; everyone was already a de facto Occupier. All you had to do is show up at your town square or your local bank, or any place that seemed appropriate. You were already a member; you were also already a leader.
Of course Mittens and Bronco wouldn’t touch the word “Occupy” with a 10-foot pole. What’s in it for them? We weren’t buying what either of them were selling (although MoveOn and other progressive handmaidens tried to cop-opt us). The last thing they wanted to do was legitimize us publicly by mentioning our name. Instead, they’ve done everything in their power to stamp us out, up to and including branding us as terrorists and throwing hundreds of us in jail.
I agree with you that these aggressive tactics made it harder for people to participate, but I don’t think that has anything whatsoever to do with the movement being spread out all over the country. Quite the contrary; that’s what makes us stronger. We are Whack-A-Moles. Occupy Will Never Die; Evict Us and We Multiply. Oppression and brutality on the part of the authorities may scare some people, but it brings others out who aren’t willing to let their community turn into a police state. Small groups of occupiers and others are confronting police tactics in their neighborhoods now like never before. They’re also doing foreclosure defense and providing mutual aid (like Occupy Sandy) and dozens of other small actions that the MSM tries very hard not to cover – unless it bleeds, and of course then it leads.
The re-election of Obama proves nothing more than that we live in an oligarchy and a nascent, year-old movement hasn’t brought it down yet. Stay tuned.
This.
“We” did OWS because…what the else can we do?
And the Occupy movement lives on in many, many ways and I hope the idea of Occupying Wall Street in ALL its forms on all levels and places never ever dies. Well, not until we defeat the bastards.
It feels kind of sneering and dismissive to me, too.
But I’m trying to give the author the benefit of the doubt.
This is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.
But FOR ME, the power of OWS is/was uniting behind the idea that “we” don’t find this sort of democracy a legitimate form of government.
We reject it THAT completely.
Democracy to the highest bidder is just NOT something to go along with, as though it’s not a serious injustice. Actual, illegal resistance is needed here.
No. I didn’t say anything about what a Romney election would have meant. It is irrelevant since it did and can not happen. I didn’t feel that an analysis of what might have happened would be a useful expenditure of time.
But the fact that Obama was convincingly re-elected means that the government policies that Occupy opposes, the bailouts, tax cuts for the wealthy, money in politics are all four more years deeper entrenched.
That the electorate is willing and able to elect either establishment candidate is a loss for OWS. That the Federal Government looks exactly the same as it did the day OWS started is a loss for OWS. Despite their best efforts, OWS and its offshoots had absolutely no effect on outcome.
This Diary is meant as a thoughtful analysis of what happened. I am a huge supporter of The Occupy “movement” (for want of a better word). I attended and spoke at the first two GA’s in Pittsburgh. I decided that my personality would not mesh well with burgeoning horizontal democracy. I felt that I would be more of a hindrance than a help so I took my activism to other places.
I donated to Occupy Supply. I took blankets to the Occupiers in Mellon Park. I defended OWS and their message to every low information idiot I ran into. I do not lack historical perspective.
I could just as easily do an analysis of all the positive effects that OWS has had. athena1 did a great job of that already.
What Occupy is not, is a national movement with the ability to effect change in its areas of interest on a national level. It was silenced by an aggressive coordinated military effort at all levels of government. I don’t like it either. I wish it wasn’t the case.
If we can’t look at the things we love critically when they fail we are doomed to repeat those failures.
Here and here are two photo collages, that I made, of Mellon Park during the Occupation and what it looks like today.
I like the scare quotes around the word “movement”. (“Oh, look, how cute! They think it’s a real movement! LOL”)
“. . . OWS and its offshoots had absolutely no effect on outcome.”
Unless the bar for success was thwarting the “election” of either establishment candidate or fundamentally altering the US government in the course of a year, this is an overstatement. I was at Occupy Tucson (and I was there from out of state for work with undocumented immigrants) and found it to be weak and quite ineffectual. But are things this black and white? Perhaps OWS contributed in ways that at present are not quantifiable? Perhaps they inspired folks to try harder next time? Maybe they changed some people’s minds? Maybe they made one less person afraid of The Owners?
Wendy, I just want to apologize for any time I’ve ever been snarky at you. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
You win the internet with this post/comment.
The Regretful Donor card.
Noted.
Not like I’ve never seen that one before.
Ok, amg, after reading through your diaries, I have to apologize, too. I was being a jerk and I’m honestly sorry.
But I still think you’re way off about Occupy.
The “Occupy” Movement never lost its mojo.
Rumors of the movement’s death, which began almost as soon as people finally admitted the movement existed, are, and always have been, greatly exaggerated. And, I suspect, wishful thinking is responsible for the “exaggerations.”
That said, I have never seen nor heard “Occupy” used as a noun, only as an adjective or a verb.
In the “Occupy Movement,” “Occupy” used as an adjective, modifies the noun “movement” to tell us which movement is under discussion. In “Occupy Sandy,” occupy is used as a verb. But, what a pisant criticism of a relief operation. Usually the issue is misappropriation of funds, not the name of the operation.
Moreover, your assumption that the Occupy movement was a response to Obama’s actions is unwarranted, and that seems to be the only basis for your conclusion that Obama’s re-election means the movement is dead.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
The NYT is not what it used to be and the Boston Herald is not worthy of use as toilet paper. Don’t know about the third publication you mentioned.
Nothing prevents you from starting the movement you would like to see.
Those in the Occupy Movement started the movement that was their vision.
They did what they wanted to do and what they reasonably could do with the resources they had and the number of volunteers they had and then some.
They did an enormous and amazing amount on no money, including changing the national conversation in about two months, something that normally takes years and millions, if not billions, of dollars.
And the movement is far from finished. If you visit the Occupy website for your area, you will probably find news of many events.
The Movement had no effect on outcome?
WTF?
In December 2010, President Obama, in direct violation of a very express and oft-repeated campaign promise, did an end run around a still Democratic Congress to make sure that taxes would not increase on January 1, 2011. (Please do not bring up Joe Lieberman. Saving tax cuts for the middle class could have been a 50+ Joe Biden vote; and the Democratic caucus had 59 members at that time.)
This was not about one measly extension of unemployment benefits, although I am sure that those who got it, including a dear family member, needed it. If you believe Obama gave away taxes increases for one lil ole extension, I would like to interest you in a few bridges.
No, this was about the religious tenet of Republicans, including registered Republican (until his appointment) and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, that you do not raise taxes during a recession.
Weeks before the movement began, the only conversation being held in federal halls of power was the Simpson Bowles Commission report how much poor people and recipients of Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance (aka Social Security) were going to have to sacrifice for the national good.
Shortly after the movement began, the national conversation changed, including much discussion of the 99%.
Our federal politicians, including those participating in a likely unconstitutional joint committee whose recommendations were supposed to be binding on Congress, suddenly became totally unable to deal with cuts. Instead, they came up with a sequester that would have no consequences until after election day.
Now, Democrats are saying they will go over the cliff sooner than leave the rich untaxed.
You see no connection among those events that might have to do with the way OWS changed the national conversation?
Forget to say: In a sentence like “Occupy has not lost its mojo,” the word “Occupy” is used as shorthand for the Occupy Movement.”
Moreover, transitive verbs become nouns and nouns become verbs. It’s a matter of how common the usage is. For example, if you looked up “primary” in a dictionary that is 50 years old, you would probably not find it listed as a verb. Yet, we say, things like “Primary all Bulldogs.”
But again, making a case against a movement, especially as it gives relief to hurricane victims, on the ground of whether a word in its name is being used as a verb or a noun is as pisant as it gets.
amghru, I apologize for my crankiness. I know the heart of most posters is in the right place; and I truly sorry. I won’t try to make any excuse.
It’s just interesting that the incredible efforts of Occupy Sandy have the caused MSM, which has ignored or vilified the Occupy movement, to acknowledge the effort, something that will be seen by a large number of people who only get their news from the MSM. I meant it as a compliment to Occupy (seemingly object of a preposition, but actually adjective of implied object), not to the MSM.
What the heck does this mean?
If you owe me an apology, athena1, I’m sincerely unaware of it, but I accept it nonetheless. From time to time most of get cross with each other, but usually it’s over ideas or opinions, thank goodness. There are, of course, exceptions to that here sometimes. ;o)
If we had a kerfuffle in the past, I hope I didn’t cross the line, either. But my comment was written in haste and with fumes, so I’m glad you thought it was even coherent. OWS has been prematurely declared dead so many times that it’s detrimental to the movement. Grace Lee Boggs (one of the Left’s heroes) did so half a year ago, and is now singing its praises; go figure.
For those who want to blame local GAs for making the decision process clumsy, I understand that. For those who do nothing as a result, I’ll bring one of my posts, ‘The Importance of Small Occupies‘, which idea can be useful for those who want to tailor their dissidence to their time and ability.
While digging it out of the google cache, I came upon this as well; it’s outdated, but has a lot of information about parallel movements that I believe were spurred by OWS. And please remember that what will eventually tip the scales is that it’s a global movement, and folks around the world are showing US the way forward.
‘American Autumn…’
Does it mean that the author’s personality is better suited to vertical hierarchy? And what level in the hierarchy? The top of the pyramid?
Excellent thread.
amghru, thanks for what you have done.
OCCUPY won’t lose it’s “mojo,” until economic mobility and a meritocracy re-emerge in the U.S. economy.
Don’t agree with this. “OWS would have found it easier to maintain its momentum had there been only one, two or three massive encampments, maybe one in NY, one in San Francisco and one in Chicago.”
I’m not sure “encampments,” are really sustainable against aggressive police action. In addition, they begin to run into all the problems of “Hoovervilles,” and are pressed into ministering to the underclass. That’s a huge drain on resources.
OCCUPY may be moving towards more of a mobile model.
Thanks to both of you for all you do for FDL.
Maybe just horizontally challenged; (I think that’s a thing…) I know we have a tiny friend who calls herself ‘vertically challenged’.
@ Boo Radley: so welcome, Boo. We’re on a forced hiatus for now. ;o)
Sometimes a diary reads like a reductio ad absurdum, which makes it valuable. On your take about “Occupy” as a noun instead of a verb – that to me is the joy of it. I can remember, especially locally, serious questions as to the employment of a word which for many oppressed people, now and historically, US occupations have had terrible results. But the word is “occupy”, not “occupation.” It is dynamic, a message, an imperative – using this word and ‘nouning’ it tells me that we are in charge of our language; our language is not in charge of us!
As to ‘no mention’ – that also is a huge plus. Occupy is so important that it, like those ladies marching down in South America, cannot be mentioned.
When a word which had been associated with the negative aspects of US history is reclaimed instead of rejected I rejoice. I hope someday a movement will do the same thing for the word “liberal”. We need a wider vocabulary not a more limited one; and above all we need to be in charge of it. In this particular case we are, in many more ways than one. Bravo, Occupy, for your efforts in helping the victims of Sandy.
That’s mojo.
I read elsewhere that Obama got less votes than Bush did for his second term. (And remember well, people – we stopped that from being considered a mandate when it came to the attack on Social Security!) Millions of voters stayed away from him this time around, a very sizeable chunk of the electorate, mostly young people. Others felt they had no choice though they publicly decried the choices they were given. Some think, poor guy he couldn’t help it.
Among those who think Obama is wonderful and they love his policies, want him to keep on doing what he has been doing…
…woah, are thereany of those in our electorate?
Maybe his family; maybe his cronies.
Where are his supporters? Not even on the side voting for Romney, though we may think they are crazily offbase in the reasons they have for not loving Obama. They certainly didn’t support him – nearly half the “electorate” there.
Where’s the win? It’s back, way back, in 2008 – when we thought we were voting for – (what was that word?)
Change.
This was not a win. For anybody.
I wondered about that comment, too. In the spirit of giving the author the benefit of the doubt, maybe the endless GAs that went on for hours were just too much; the were often just too much for a lot of people. But learning about real consensus and watching little lights go on for people who’d never had a change to have their voices heard made it all worth it. So many of us now have a model to at least aspire to; I think that’s what is making Occupy Sandy so interesting. People aren’t afraid to just go do whatever needs to be done, without waiting for some sort of patriarchal structure in which to work.
^^drat – I meant “never had a chance to have their voices heard”
To the OP: I mean this in a spirit of genuine curiosity. Do you have a beef with Occupy’s acceptance of the anarchists like David Graber? Is your diary meant to be a subtle criticism of anarchism?
You are absolutely right that “Occupy” has been turned from an action into a brand. It now means everything – and it means nothing. I dunno. Everyone has an opinion on what “should” have happened with Occupy, but that doesn’t change what did happen.
All and all, I guess it’s for the best. I don’t think the dreamers and anarchists who organized and precipitated actions which originally defined “Occupy” actually *need* the brand to advance. Generally, these factions define themselves by existing outside of established structures and innovating approaches from that vantage.
OTOH, wayward Democrats who’ve latched on to inject a bit of freshness into their flagging traditionalist political activism have far less capacity to operate outside of a framework someone else hands them. Since what they are using it for, while anemic in context of the original resonant 99% message, are generally decent things, IMO it’s just as well they’ve found a lifeboat. While damn near worthless in terms of changing the status quo, I think there is benefit for all of us in seeing them not drowned out by the conservative Democrats who have an iron grip on their party and have been effectively isolating them from any and all infrastructure.
Whatever. When one gets past the annoying smugness inherent with the new stewards of “brand Occupy,” it really doesn’t matter much.
You are totally right. Hardly anyone actually *wanted* to vote for either of the ass-hats.
There are no local businesses with the needed supplies, or people would just go buy them directly. That’s part of the problem, if there is no place to buy diapers, OWS is having them shipped in.
The supermarkets and hardware stores sold out in the first few days.
Only areas that have power back have meaningfula mounts of new merchandise. Also, the beachfront places sometimes don’t have even the buildings where the businesses used to be.
Well, here is a great take on what OWS is not. ;o)
So good to see you here, Cynthia Kouril; not a few of us had been concerned about you and your welfare.
Amghru, I just found this piece by Kevin Kosztola that may make you think a bit more deeply about OWS, too. Enjoy.
Yes, I agree that civil disobendience is called for in this crisis. I get flummoxed over what constitutes ‘disobedience’. Is the right to asssemble a dead letter? Did someone cancel that constitutional right when I wasn’t looking?