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(photo: edenpictures / flickr)
In the course of our vivid exchanges in the Book Salon yesterday, I mentioned recent polls on public opinion toward Occupy in polls over the summer. Below are the specifics. But first, let me address the objection that these assessments don’t accord with a reader’s sense of how the population is feeling. In the early weeks of the Occupy movement, last fall, majorities in the polls did support Occupy. (I give some of the particulars in Occupy Nation.) They liked this movement. Accordingly, Occupy supporters liked those polls. But we don’t get to cherry-pick the polls we like and discard the rest, not if we’re honest with ourselves. Polls have limits, of course, but we should pay attention to fluctuations, because the same statistical limits should apply across the board. We don’t have to be straitjacketed by the polls. But we shouldn’t pretend them away.
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To what extent, if at all, do you personally identify with the ideals of the Occupy Wall Street or We Are The 99% movement?…Identify with them strongly, identify with them, identify with them a little, do not identify with them at all
Ipsos-Public Affairs/Reuters Poll, Jul, 2012
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Survey by Reuters. Methodology: Conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs, July 5 – July 9, 2012 and based on 1,154 telephone interviews. Sample: National adult. Interviews were conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones. [USIPSOSR.071012R.RD] (View Citation)
Do you consider yourself a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement?
NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, Jul, 2012
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Survey by NBC News, Wall Street Journal. Methodology: Conducted by Hart and McInturff Research Companies, July 18 – July 22, 2012 and based on 1,000 telephone interviews. Sample: National registered voters. The sample included 300 respondents who use a cell phone only. [USNBCWSJ.12JUL.RF04C] (View Citation)
(Now I’m going to read you the names of several public figures and groups and I’d like you to rate you feelings toward each one as very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, or very negative. If you don’t know the name, please just say so.)…The Occupy Wall Street movement
NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, Jul, 2012
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Survey by NBC News, Wall Street Journal. Methodology: Conducted by Hart and McInturff Research Companies, July 18 – July 22, 2012 and based on 1,000 telephone interviews. Sample: National registered voters. The sample included 300 respondents who use a cell phone only. [USNBCWSJ.12JUL.R07J] (View Citation)
To what extent, if at all, do you personally identify with the ideals of the Occupy Wall Street or We Are The 99% movement?…Identify with them strongly, identify with them, identify with them a little, do not identify with them at all?
Ipsos-Public Affairs/Reuters Poll, Aug, 2012
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Survey by Reuters. Methodology: Conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs, August 2 – August 6, 2012 and based on 1,168 telephone interviews. Sample: National adult. Interviews were conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones. [USIPSOSR.080812R.RD] (View Citation)
To what extent, if at all, do you personally identify with the ideals of the Occupy Wall Street or We Are The 99% movement?…Identify with them strongly, identify with them, identify with them a little, do not identify with them at all
National Treasury Employees Union Survey, Aug, 2012
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Survey by National Treasury Employees Union. Methodology: Conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs, August 2 – August 6, 2012 and based on 1,000 telephone interviews. Sample: National adult. Interviews were conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones. [USIPSOSR.12NATREAS.RD] (View Citation)
46 Comments
Rec’d.
Shows how fu@ked we are when there’s more Fox News believers.
We should just all pack up and migrate from this moronic fu@king place.
Of course there would be stupid idiots there also.
Occupy was a brilliant political moment. For number of reasons, most of which were self-inflicted, Occupy failed to become a political movement.
Sadly, these polls reflect the current reality. Occupy is over.
The answer is not to run away. The answer is to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Let’s face it, folks: Hippie-punching is a popular political move because, in addition to reinforcing existing cultural memes, it works. Dislike for hippies helped keep a lot of average Americans from openly opposing the Vietnam War:
It didn’t help that people knew that the government was watching. Even in 1968, just a mere phone call of inquiry — not even an actual threat — from the FBI to an employer would be enough to make that employer fire a person. This was a chilling thought in prosperous 1960′s America; imagine how much more effective it is as a threat now.
x2
Its too easy for corporate media to drop subtle “hints” against a grass-roots movement– killing it in its tracks by turning a majority against it.
I’ve heard all sorts of defamatory comments (propaganda) resulting in one tea-party patriot to proclaim, “OWS people need to be taken out and shot.”
The sad thing is, a massive grass-roots movement is the only thing that will bring about meaningful change in/from our new corporatocracy.
Occupy was and is a seedbed for future activists. A lot of people are activists now thanks to Occupy.
The R’s created and then supported (adopted?) the Tea Party in the vacuum created when Obama did not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes and failed to go after Wall St…effectively tapping down his own surging left movement primed for justice. I blame Obama and the fake Democrats for not supporting their own base including Occupy.
Todd Gitlin:
Come on. man, you’re no dummy and you’ve been around the barn a few times on politics. Why do you merely present data with no comment? Why a challenge with no response? I know what you’re capable of.
Looks like we’ll have to wait for the next big economic crash. A friend of mine thinks electing Romney would hasten it and might be a good thing, like “let’s get it over with already”.
I would be interested to see nationwide pub opinion poll of the Wisconsin demonstrations. Maybe it’s the “hippie” image and the inclusion of homeless that put many people off. The derogatory term I have read over and over in comments about Occupy is “losers”. Fact is, all but the privileged few are indeed losers.
At the time most people said they did not want Occupy to adopt specific goals or to affiliate with a party or even to form a party. But by its very nature the message was political. It has to fit somewhere and do something. Some of them did that. But not enough.
I think there is an energy still out there. It does not have to make encampments. But it has to become political, probably progressive and then endorse or not candidates for office.
I mean, basically we are all losers if we can’t connect with the “average Joe” and Jane Amerikan. Wisconsin did that better than other Occupations.
My local Occupy was apparently promoted by MoveOn as an Obama collection agency….. tho most of us old wanna be activists didn’t initially recognize that. When we didn’t give ‘em what they wanted, the list of potential activists somehow disappeared and the initial enthusiasm disappeared along with it.
Sometimes passion really does need to be organized. The lack of organization left Occupy floundering. Black Box activities didn’t help, either.
Ain’t gonna change until Jane and John Doe along with the upper crust 1% wannabees are forced to goose step or get gassed.
And there are those who think people will take to the streets…HA.
In your dreams.
Maybe we need mini tammany halls of like minded in each county focused on what it takes to get what we want and electing the people we want at local, state and national levels and supporting issues with demonstrations.
Another crash is coming soon enough even if the Big O wins.
I’m not even sure that would do it. There are too many people who could be thrown out onto the street starving and still the kiss the asses of the PTB like some frat pledge and say “Thank you sir, can I have another ?”
…sigh….yes….
Despair and hunger are great motivators.
Evidently, we’ll have to put up with a bought-off, unaccountable and increasingly corporatist/fascist government until the suffering is unbearable.
A possible scenario: This slow general decline may end up turning into a kind of creeping authoritarian plutocracy that people somehow become accustomed to enduring.
What went wrong is that Occupy never engaged in direct action. If all you do is protest and carry signs, nothing will happen.
yep
Dmitry Orlov.
And yep
Better link. http://vimeo.com/25262968
Was the point of these polls to show how effective MSM became after the police state squelched dissent in a nationally coordinated destruction of OWS ? Or maybe to confirm Jaime Dimon’s power to turn the NYPD into his private goon squad with a $6million bribe via their pension fund ?Or to interview registered voters to rig the outcome ?Hey todd Gitlin did you sell out the movement directly or did you and your pal ,David Horowitz ,become for-profit conservatives at the same time ? It’s been so long ,but one never forgets complete ideological flip-flops virtually overnight .
Bottom line Todd Gitlin ,beyond your specious and convoluted argument ,is the existential given that the majority of Americans stand for OWS values ,then and now , ,,,and regardless of changing sentiments toward OWS ,those values are all found as core fundaments of the Green Party .Now Todd ,tell the blue dogs we cannot be cherry picking reality for Obama .Good try old chap ,your sophistical prowess still seems in tact.
First. we put entirely too much emphasis on polls. You do what is correct, what you believe in, not what polls well. This is expecially true if you are an anti-establishment movement and not some polician looking to be re-elected for life.
Second, polls should be picked apart very carefully. They are done with an agenda. If you change your behavior because of a poll, rest assured you are playing into someone’s hands.
It’s like those “independent” scientific studies that told American for decades that there was no evidence that smoking causes cancer. Guess what? They did not reflect reality. Neither do polls.
If you think Occupy did nothing, go back and read headlines from 2011, before Ocuppy began.
Occupy did an incredible job of changing the national conversation from “Exactly how much more can we take out of the hides of the poor and elderly” to “Who is finally going to represent the 99%?”
Occupy did that with media that ignored it for the first several weeks, then reported only negative things, a President who publicly pretended it did not exist, but privately sicced Homeland Security on it, and mayors, most Democratic, who acted as though Occupy were public enemy #1.
Usually, it takes years, heaps of money and the cooperation of media and politicians to change national conversation that drastically.
Occupy is not over, as anyone who looks up the websites of Occupy in various cities would see. It has only changed tactics.
If there was any failing, it may have been on the part of the alleged left, who did not join them.
BTW, how much social change has your posting effected?
Just to clarify, my prior post was not directed at Todd.
Occupy is going to have a hard time when liberal Democrats are high-fiving each other over an economy in which paychecks are down and the Dow is up.
Polling can produce interesting yet largely irrelevant results — especially when it comes to social and cultural movements. As long as people are doing what they believe is right — as most of those involved with Occupy have been doing — poll results don’t really matter.
A historical example: the Civil Rights Movement (which, btw, was a very different animal than the Occupy Movement). The Civil Rights Movement polled 20% — if that — in the South at its height, and it never polled a majority in favor in the North until after most of the major civil rights measures had been passed into law. Just because it didn’t have majority support didn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.
The Occupy Movement never turned into a political movement because it was never intended to. There are already lots of political movements to be part of if that’s what’s important to you; but to many of those involved in Occupy, the whole notion of political involvement was corrupt and corrupting. Rather than engage in that system, many saw the future in creating and developing a different process for mutual interest, a different system. That’s the whole point of General Assemblies, Affinity Groups, Working Groups, informal alliances and so on. Experience demonstrated the difficulties as well as the rewards of working toward mutual interest in these ways. When it works, it’s great. When it doesn’t, it’s hell. The internal strains and tensions revealed in these alternative forms of community and involvement made it difficult to form a united front in the face of increasingly harsh and violent repression.
Despite the internal difficulties, it was largely the official violence directed against Occupy that led to its apparent decline, both as public presence and in public perception. Most people simply do not want to get involved in a situation in which they can be arbitrarily shot, gassed, beaten and arrested at the whim of out of control police forces who become enraged and violent at the sight of a pup tent. Most people think of their own self-preservation for some reason. It’s unfortunate for movements, let alone revolutions, but that’s human nature.
The alternatives under development in Occupy encampments have now dispersed widely throughout the society, partly as a consequence of the violence and virulence of the repression. The movement hasn’t become an “underground” — because it’s all in plain sight — but it isn’t like it was. It’s far more closely focused on the needs and interests of communities at large, what will provide for the future, how to create and engage in more appropriate social models, etc.
It’s happening all around us.
Bingo, and X2. I’d add that *were* OWS to endorse candidates, the social democracy movement would be extremely limited in scope, thus excluding others along the political spectrum who agree on the core message of Occupy.
Here are some of things that are happening. Too many of you make a disturbing error in declaring it dead, imo.
Phooey on the push-polls.
I think the first thing that needs to happen in order to figure out what went wrong is to stop blaming the media, the Democrats, etc. This needs to happen because it does no good. The politicians and the media figures are externalities that can’t be changed. If Occupy, or whatever replaces it, cannot grow despite media criticism and getting the cold shoulder from Democrats then it is basically capitulation to those forces, and a real impact will never be made.
As a few other posters have pointed out the wounds Occupy suffered were largely self-inflicted. What Occupy needs to do is to look at what they did that people didn’t like and do something else.
Perhaps Occupy was “never supposed to be a political movement”, and the whole point was really to show the country Occupy’s internal processes of “General Assemblies, Affinity Groups, Working Groups, informal alliances and so on.” But unfortunately the rest of the country was and is largely uninterested in that, and wanted something that would wrest power from the rich fight to end the extreme inequality that has plagues our society. Many people may count Occupy’s process as a success, but to everyone else it is a failure in the sense that we didn’t get what is needed.
If Occupy’s only mission was to show everybody an alternative process, fine. But you must also recognize that you are the only ones interested in that path and acknowledge you aren’t going to have a larger, lasting impact.
And what is preventing “the rest of the country” from doing what you say they want and what you say is needed?
Who or what is standing in the way?
Thank you Mr. Gitlin, for responding, I think, to my question at the Book Salon and also in more detail here. For the record, (hoping I am correct in assuming this) here is my question and comment:
“You have stated above that “public opinion toward OWS itself turned negative.” Is that your perception from polls, or do you have other evidence of that? It is my feeling that public opinion actually reflects more and more the physical reality that our government is run by oligarchs, and I think that was a powerful message embodied still by those in the movement. And I myself still have a very positive attitude to it.”
I don’t think your assessment and mine conflict. Polling data shows indeed a disconnect developing between the message of Occupy and people’s perception of that message.
My point was that people originally agreed with that message and were supportive, and later on that having absorbed it into their own thinking and having ‘lost touch’ with present Occupies they reflect that in the polling data.
At the same time, as I said, public opinion actually is stronger with respect to an increased awareness of the part money plays in politics. And that, in response to junk@33, is the ‘larger, lasting impact’ that Occupy has, and will continue to have. Nothing has changed in politics; in fact it has gotten worse. We are still, in all our diversity, members of the 99% financially speaking.
Thank you again, Mr. Gitlin, for taking the time to post the data from your book. It was a very good forum, the kind FDL is so good at presenting.
Isn’t it something? There’s so much vibrant creative effort under way, much of it inspired by Occupy or actually the current Occupy projects all over the country and around the world, but without the encampments, it’s rarely noticed in the media so most Americans are oblivious — unless they stumble upon one of the OccuFarms or some of the many other efforts (good list in your link).
Occupy did a lot more than “change the conversation,” and it is continuing to do so.
Prefiguring…?
Oh dear god. Politicians and media figures are “externalities” that can’t be changed? Occupy is a failure because we “didn’t get what was needed” in less than a year of existence, with arguably the most oppressive reaction ever seen by the state? Occupy’s wounds were mostly self-inflicted? I suspect Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabeghi, among countless others, would beg to differ. The rest of the country is disintered and wanted instead, something that wound “wrest power from the rich” and “fight to end extreme inequality?”
All I can say is that we must have done a really, really dreadful job of getting the message out and counteracting MSM propaganda. The fact is that Occupy has focused more closely on those goals than just about any other group extant since last September. Whether we were occupying banks or shutting down ports or feeding people or, for that matter, rioting in the streets, that was exactly what we were fighting. I feel like I live on another planet sometimes.
Sorry, I type too fast when I am this exasperated. That should say: The rest of the country is disinterested and wanted instead, something that would “wrest power from the rich” and “fight to end extreme inequality?”
And we get more of the same here?
Christ in a canoe, as my pappy used to say. Defeatist, disconnected…bullshit, I say.
Wake up to the possibilities of a second American revolution of consciousness!
A lot of things, but I think you are just changing the subject.
I guess so because as a very interested and very sympathetic observer that’s not what I see. However, my reaction isn’t from what the media says, it is in reaction to what people are saying in this comment thread.
Did Occupy face one of the most oppressive state reactions ever? Well the state didn’t fire on crowds of protesters, but it certainly is the worst reaction since the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war protests.
And I am not saying that Occupy didn’t accomplish anything, far from it. What I am saying is Occupy has failed to reach a far wider audience, which is something it will have to do to succeed (at least if success is measured by dismantling the oligarchy we live in). Is that disputable? Furthermore, maybe I’m entirely wrong (even though I don’t think I am) but I don’t see America as ready to embrace Anarchy and collective decision making which so many of you seem to see as the solution.
I do think America is ready to stop being an oligarchy, and needs leadership in this direction. And maybe I and others were expecting too much in looking at Occupy to provide that leadership (as ChePasa said in reaction to me above, who is standing in the way of some other group in taking the lead). And if that is the case fine, I guess there is little point in trying to be constructive.
You’re right – they haven’t used live ammunition (yet). I suppose I could be more precise: the state’s oppression of simple assembly has been somewhat unprecedented. The coordinated response to any attempt to assemble in the commons has kept people from being able to exercise their rights. I don’t mean occupying or overnight camping. As has been well documented on this website and elsewhere, it’s getting nearly impossible to have a peaceful assembly or march without threat of arrest or injury. And with stay-away orders, once you’ve been arrested, you no longer have a right to even participate. I know that has theoretically always been the case, but in the past year, the enforcement of previously unenforced laws – and the passage of ever more draconian ones – has been noteworthy.
I don’t necessarily see anarchy or even collective decision-making as the solution – certainly not the only one. And to be quite honest, I see most Americans as a bunch of delusional, selfish morans who aren’t ready to embrace current reality, much less a new paradigm. Please know, I am not directing that at you or anyone here. It’s just that the election has forced everyone to show their hands – and those hands are hella weak, if you ask me. People don’t mind Obama’s boot on their neck; they think he’ll let up on the pressure just a little if we just vote for him once again. When that’s the status quo among progressives, I have very little hope. Something else will have to happen to get their attention. At the moment, they are probably Occupy’s worst enemies.
I think you are entirely correct and I didn’t mean to play down the level of oppression which in many ways is quite unprecedented. But I also don’t want to play down the instances throughout American history when state oppression has erupted into deadly violence either, though I agree that the state would definitely stoop to murder again.
You didn’t say anything I could disagree with, but as much as Americans can really be “morans” and full of delusion you shouldn’t play down the impact Occupy truly did have, and American’s receptiveness to Occupy’s anti-oligarchic message.
I really appreciate you taking my comments in the spirit in which they were intended – because they could easily be construed as incredibly arrogant. They were prompted by fear of stuff like this prediction of the implosion of the economy. Occupiers were starting to learn how to be self-sufficient, to self-govern, to grow our own food, to solve some of our own problems – just the thing we need to know how to do if/when this prediction comes true.
So I hope you’re right that Occupy has had some impact and that maybe it’s just a delayed reaction. I wonder whether those who vote for Obama will become disillusioned before the next big crisis occurs.
Thanks for this Carol, but I don’t think those Obama voters who aren’t already disillusioned will ever see other than what they want to see.
Well, I was an Obama voter in 2008 – I was somehow able to fool myself into believing there was hope, even though I really knew better. But it didn’t take very long for me to snap out of it.