All things Occupy are discussed in this article by an Occupy member. He describes how the movement uses police so I put sections from that at the top. Following that I copied the article from its beginning though eventually it was getting long so I snipped some of it. It continues beyond what I posted, I stopped at the section on 'danger of the Democratic Party.' It does sound like Occupy's expensive Wall St. office space (paid for by an 'anonymous donor') is serving a purpose. Fta, "OWS’s facilitation working group, which is tasked with running the New York City GA "...
12/14/11, "Occupy and the tasks of Socialists," by Pham Binh, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
"Red and Blue
"Our task is to overcome the police as a repressive force, to neutralise them, as US Marine and Iraq veteran Shamar Thomas did when he stopped 30 cops from arresting peaceful Occupy protesters at a massive Times Square OWS demonstration. Thomas shamed them, implied they were cowards, and told them there was “no honour” in brutalising the very people they are supposed to protect....
As socialists we should be going out of our way to organise actions that might split the police along class lines or cause them disciplinary problems. Cases like Rorey’s are a golden opportunity. It offers us the exceedingly rare possibility of fanning the flames of discontent within the police force, between the rank-and-file cops and their bosses, between the police force and the 1% they work for. ...
Occupy is absolutely correct in its openness to including rank-and-file cops in a struggle against the 1%. This correctness has been proven in practice many times over. Police in Albany resisted pressure from Democratic Party Governor Anthony Cuomo to clear and arrest occupiers. Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis joined OWS and was arrested in full uniform during the November 17 day of action; he
- carried a sign that read, “NYPD: Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries”.
It is precisely because the uprising says, “you too, officer, are part of the 99%” that Christopher Rorey, a black officer with the DeKalb County Police Department, emailed Occupy Atlanta for help fighting the unjust foreclosure of his family’s home. Occupy Atlanta sent a dozen occupiers, delaying the foreclosure temporarily....
"There is no debate, at least within Occupy. The police rank and file are part of the 99%. They are the part of the 99% that keep the rest of the 99% in line at the behest of the 1%. The police rank and file are professional class traitors. Shouting “you are the 99%!” at them drives that point home far better than calling them “pigs” or “our enemies in blue”. ...
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Beginning of article:
"Occupy is a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-merge the socialist and working-class movements and create a viable broad-based party of radicals, two prospects that have not been on the cards in the United States since the late 1960s and early 1970s. The socialist left has not begun to think through these “big picture” implications of Occupy, nor has it fully adjusted to the new tasks that Occupy’s outbreak has created for socialists. In practice, the socialist left follows Occupy’s lead rather than Occupy follow the socialist left’s lead. As a result, we struggle to keep pace with Occupy’s rapid evolution.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) mobilised more workers and oppressed people in four weeks than the entire socialist left combined has in four decades. We would benefit by coming to grips with how and why other forces (namely anarchists) accomplished this historic feat.
The following is an attempt to understand Occupy, review the socialist response, and draw some practical conclusions aimed at helping the socialist left become central rather than remain marginal to Occupy’s overall direction.
Occupy’s class character and leadership
Occupy is more than a movement and less than a revolution. It is an uprising, an elemental and unpredictable outpouring of both rage and hope from the depths of the 99%.
Occupy is radically different from the mass movements that rocked US politics in the last decade or so: the immigrants’ rights movement that culminated on May 1, 2006, in the first national political strike since 1886, the Iraq anti-war movement of 2002-2003 and the global justice movement that began with the Battle of Seattle in 1999 and ended on 9/11. All three were led by liberal non-governmental organisations (NGOs). They sponsored the marches, obtained the permits and selected who could and could not speak from the front of the rallies. Militant, illegal direct action tended to be the purview of adventurist Black Bloc elements or handfuls of very committed activists.
Compared to these three movements, the following differences stand out: Occupy is broader in terms of active participants and public support and, most importantly, is far more militant and defiant. Tens of thousands of people are willing to brave arrest and police brutality. The uprising was deliberately designed by its anarchist initiators to be an open-ended and all-inclusive process, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of the failed conventional single-issue protest model. The “people’s mic”, invented to circumvent the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) ban on amplified sound, means that anyone can be heard by large numbers of people at any time.
One of the most important elements that makes Occupy an uprising and not merely a mass movement is its alleged leaderlessness. Of course as Marxists we know that every struggle requires leadership in some form, and Occupy is no exception. The leaders of Occupy are those who put their bodies on the line at the encampments and get deeply involved in the complex, Byzantine decision-making process Occupy uses known as “modified consensus”. Occupy’s leaders are those who make the proposals at planning meetings, working group, and general assemblies (GAs) that attract enough support to determine the uprising’s course of action.
The people leading the uprising are those who are willing to make the biggest sacrifices for it.
Since Occupy is self-organising and self-led by its most dedicated participants, attempts to make its decision-making process more accessible to those who are not willing or able to dedicate themselves to Occupy 24 hours a day, seven days a week will fall flat. “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!” is not just a chant, it is a way of life for Occupy’s de facto leadership.
This reality has affected the class character of encampment participants, who tend to be either what Karl Marx called lumpenproletariat (long-term homeless, hustlers, drug addicts and others who have fallen through the cracks of the capitalist edifice) or highly educated (white) students, ex-students and graduate students. The former joined the encampments not just to eat and sleep in a relatively safe place but also because they hope the uprising will win real, meaningful change. The latter tend to dominate Occupy’s convoluted decision-making process and what motivates them is identical to what motivates the lumpenproletarian elements: hope that Occupy will win real, meaningful change. Many of these people are saddled with tremendous amounts of personal debt, have worked two or three part-time jobs simultaneously, or were unable to find work in their field despite their expensive, extensive educations. They were destined to be secure petty bourgeois or well-paid white-collar workers before the ongoing fallout from the 2008 economic crisis claimed their futures and put their backs against the wall. This is the material reality underpinning the determination of Occupy participants to keep coming back despite repeated arrests, beatings, and setbacks. Their determination is the stuff revolutions are made of.
The advantage of Occupy’s structure and form is that the Democratic Party, liberal NGOs and union leaders have been unable to co-opt the uprising before it exploded into over 1000 US towns and cities and targeted President Obama. The disadvantage is that it limits Occupy geographically to places where authorities will tolerate encampments and sociologically to the least and most privileged sections of the population, to those who have no where else to go besides the encampments and to those who can afford to camp out for weeks at a time. ...
OWS’s birth and the socialist response
The US socialist left did not cover OWS in its daily publications until after NYPD deputy inspector Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed cornered women on a sidewalk near Union Square on September 24. The Socialist Equality Party’s coverage on its World Socialist Web Site began on September 26, the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s (PSL) coverage in Liberation News began on September 27, the International Socialist Organization’s (ISO) first article appeared in Socialist Worker on September 8 and Solidarity’s initial discussion began on October 3.
This tardiness reflected the socialist left’s deep-seated scepticism at a protest without demands, a rally without a permit, OWS’s talk of prefiguring a future non-capitalist society in an outdoor camp in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district and a “leaderless” “horizontal” process. The preponderance of these anarchist elements, combined with the socialist left’s theoretical sophistication and political preconceptions, led to a “wait and see” approach that consigned us to the role of rearguard, not vanguard.
The uprising succeeded not only in spite of its alleged weaknesses but because of them. Repression from above and determination from below combined to win Occupy mass support in the weeks after September 24. The socialist left made OWS a priority and moved beyond sending its members to OWS organising meetings in early October as the trade unions, MoveOn.org and other left-liberal groups mobilised for the October 5 march of over 20,000 to protest the NYPD’s bait-and-arrest operation on the Brooklyn Bridge the previous Saturday.
Socialists on anarchist terrain
Occupy is undoubtedly related to the “occupy everything, demand nothing" trend that appeared in student mobilisations against budget cuts to higher education in 2009-2010. David Graeber, the anarchist OWS organiser who coined “we are the 99%”, pointed out how anarchism informs Occupy’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of state and corporate authorities and its insistence on direct action, direct democracy, non-hierarchical organising, consensus and prefigurative politics.
The task for the socialist left with respect to these issues is to understand: 1) how and why these methods dominate the uprising and 2) what to do about it. ...
In the weeks following September 17 OWS’s facilitation working group, which is tasked with running the New York City GA , trained organisers all over the country in the modified consensus process with dozens of video sessions broadcast over livestream.com in addition to face-to-face sessions with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of OWS participants. Many of these trainees then traveled to other cities or returned to their home cities to launch new occupations....
The reality of OWS is that the “horizontal” modified consensus method, the GA and the spokescouncil are all highly dysfunctional but not fatally so (at least at this stage). Prior to the eviction, many OWS working groups began secretly hoarding street donations they received from the GA’s official finance working group (FWG) because they put lots of money into the general fund but faced serious hurdles in getting any money out of it for badly needed items due to OWS’s protracted, bureaucratic decision-making process. Also, because FWG administers over $500,000 in internet donations, many working groups saw no need to contribute to a fund flush with cash and resented what amounted to a one-way cashflow.
The money hoarding was part of a divide that emerged between full-time occupiers who felt disenfranchised and eventually boycotted the GA on the one hand and movement types (many of whom did not sleep in Liberty Park) who believed that the modified consensus process was the single most important element of the uprising on the other. This divide manifested itself geographically with the emergence of a “ghetto” and a “gentrified” area that was captured in a Daily Show segment.
The spokescouncil structure approved by the New York City GA, aimed at alleviating its frustrating and undemocratic logjams, simply transferred those problems to the spokescouncil while not significantly improving the GA’s process. All of these problems worsened after NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg evicted OWS from Liberty Park and OWS did not contest the eviction by returning there, a blow the uprising is still struggling to recover from (an improved encampment is planned for a new location)....
Anarchists and the Black Bloc
One stark difference between Occupy and its great dress rehearsal, the global justice movement, is the role played by Black Bloc (BB) and the broader anarchist reaction to BB. BB (not an organised group but a tactic) came to the fore of Occupy for the first time during the November 2 Oakland general strike called in response to the police department’s crackdown that left Iraq veteran Scott Olsen in the hospital with a serious brain injury (he was hit in the face with a tear gas canister).
The first notable BB incident was the vandalism at Whole Foods and major banks during the November 2 day-time marches. The second incident occurred when BB led a failed attempt to seize the Traveler’s Aid Society (TAS) later that evening after the general strike succeeded in shutting down Oakland’s port with a 10,000-strong throng. Although related, these two incidents should be examined separately because they involve different issues and had different dynamics.
The vandalism at Whole Foods seemed like a replay of BB’s infamous Starbucks window-smashings in 1999 that came to (unfairly) symbolise the global justice movement. Things turned out differently this time when BB’s actions touched off physical fights among demonstrators, with people shouting and eventually throwing objects at BB when they refused to stop damaging the property of Whole Foods and other corporate behemoths along the march route. BB acted with impunity in the global justice movement because the mantra of “diversity of tactics” prevailed, which, in practice, meant no one had the right to tell anyone else what they could or could not do even if their actions damaged the movement as a whole. This childish attitude has given way to a much more serious approach by Occupy participants who feel a strong sense of ownership over the uprising and will not allow adventurists to wreck it.
The Whole Foods incident led to thoughtful criticisms of BB’s actions in the context of Occupy from fellow anarchists. This marks a significant turning point in the maturation of US anarchism. The socialist left needs to incorporate this reality into its Occupy strategy.
Later that evening, 150 people led by BB occupied TAS, an empty building that became vacant as a result of recent budget cuts. After dropping a banner in celebration of the easy seizure of TAS, the crowd of occupiers swelled to 700 or so. They erected barricades at the two nearest intersections and set them on fire when hundreds of Oakland riot police appeared (the cops kept a low profile throughout the day). The fires and small barricades blocking the street did nothing to stop police from marching on TAS and arresting those who stayed to defend it (many BB fled to avoid arrest). ...
The overwhelming majority of actions, especially direct actions, that Occupy engages in are not approved by GAs. Autonomous groups (sometimes working groups officially recognised by local GAs, sometimes not) call actions, and occupiers choose to get on board or not. If every group with an idea for an action had to get GA approval, said action would simply never happen because of the bureaucratic nature of the modified consensus process when used by large groups. Expecting anarchists, especially BB, to come to a GA for approval before taking action is not realistic, nor is it a viable strategy for dealing with the very real problem of adventurist trends within Occupy. Furthermore, the TAS occupation was not an attempt to hijack or disrupt an explicitly non-violent march by an ultra-left minority as the Whole Foods incident was.
OWS itself began with the “heroism of an elite”, the 100-200 people who risked arrest by sleeping in Liberty Park starting on September 17 to make their point. Without their heroic action, the “mass unity” of the Occupy uprising would never have been born....
Reds and blue
One of the socialist left’s most consistent criticisms of Occupy has concerned the issue of the police. PSL’s Liberation News ran an article entitled, “Are the police forces part of the 99% or tools of the 1%?” The Internationalist Group attributed the predominance of whites at OWS to its “line” on the police: “A main reason why there are relatively few black and Latino participants in Occupy Wall Street is this positive attitude toward the police, who day-in and day-out persecute the oppressed.” Socialist Worker correspondent Danny Lucia concluded an article entitled “Officer not-at-all-friendly” this way:
I'll ask the same question now to all those chanting and blogging about the police being part of the 99 percent. When you chant and blog support for the cops, when you publicly speculate that maybe deep down the cops really like you, how does that make you appear to your darker-skinned comrades in the movement who have no doubts about how the police feel about them?
The New York City ISO even held a public meeting on the topic: “Our Enemies in Blue: Why the Police Are Not Part of the 99%.”...
According to the socialist left, OWS was and is too friendly to the police, when, in reality, OWS had the opposite problem: hostility to the NYPD was so strong that incidents of groping, sexual assaults and rapes that began almost from day one of the occupation went unreported for weeks. This practice changed as the incidents escalated and occupiers realised it
(When such reports were filed, the NYPD blamed the victims, creating an opportunity for OWS to link up with SlutWalk.)
None of the socialist publications acknowledged or seemed to be aware of this development within Occupy, nor did they offer any practical guidance on what to do about the sexual assaults that plagued occupations across the country.
The socialist left objects to the inclusion of the rank and file of the police force in what Occupy calls “the 99%” by which the uprising means everyone outside the wealthiest 1% who destroyed the economy, paid themselves and rigged the political system. ...No act of police violence will “finally settle the debate” about whether the police are part of the 99% because there is no debate, at least within Occupy. The police rank and file are part of the 99%. They are the part of the 99% that keep the rest of the 99% in line at the behest of the 1%. The police rank and file are professional class traitors. Shouting “you are the 99%!” at them drives that point home far better than calling them “pigs” or “our enemies in blue”. ...
Where the police rank and file fit into the 99%-1% dichotomy is separate from questions like whether Occupy should march in defence of police pensions or if shouting “you are the 99%!” or “join us” at the police is something Occupy should do. These are the live issues facing Occupy that the socialist left should be discussing and providing a political lead on instead of criticising who occupiers maintain “sympathy” for.
Occupy is absolutely correct in its openness to including rank-and-file cops in a struggle against the 1%. This correctness has been proven in practice many times over. Police in Albany resisted pressure from Democratic Party Governor Anthony Cuomo to clear and arrest occupiers. Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis joined OWS and was arrested in full uniform during the November 17 day of action; he
- carried a sign that read, “NYPD: Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries”.
It is precisely because the uprising says, “you too, officer, are part of the 99%” that Christopher Rorey, a black officer with the DeKalb County Police Department, emailed Occupy Atlanta for help fighting the unjust foreclosure of his family’s home. Occupy Atlanta sent a dozen occupiers, delaying the foreclosure temporarily. Now the bank (government-owned Fannie Mae) is taking legal action to force Rorey to turn over all email correspondence between his family and Occupy Atlanta, as if evicting them was not enough.
If the socialist left’s “line” on the police prevailed in Occupy and the uprising treated rank-and-file cops as “the enemy”, none of these things would have happened. If officer Rorey is not part of the 99%, then Occupy Atlanta is guilty of betraying our cause and siding with “our enemies in blue”....
Occupy Atlanta was not afraid to pick officer Rorey’s side and we should not be afraid to either.
As socialists we should be going out of our way to organise actions that might split the police along class lines or cause them disciplinary problems. Cases like Rorey’s are a golden opportunity. It offers us the exceedingly rare possibility of fanning the flames of discontent within the police force, between the rank-and-file cops and their bosses, between the police force and the 1% they work for.
The tension between the police and their political bosses became evident after the Oakland police union issued a scathing rebuke to Oakland’s Democratic Party Mayor Jean Quan, who ordered them to clear Occupy Oakland and then tried to distance herself from the crackdown after they nearly killed Iraq veteran Scott Olsen and provoked a general strike. Imagine the difficulty that would have emerged within the Atlanta police department if they had been ordered to clear the house of a fellow officer, his family, and “pro cop” occupiers.
It is for these strategic reasons that Occupy the Hood founder Malik Rhaasan spoke positively about the prospect of marching on NYPD headquarters in defence of their pensions. Such an action would put the NYPD in the awkward position of possibly pepper spraying and arresting a “pro cop” march. Rhaasan’s position should also serve as a warning to disproportionately white socialist groups not to use the suffering of oppressed peoples at the hands of the police to make bogus arguments about Occupy and the police....
Our task is to overcome the police as a repressive force, to neutralise them, as US Marine and Iraq veteran Shamar Thomas did when he stopped 30 cops from arresting peaceful Occupy protesters at a massive Times Square OWS demonstration. Thomas shamed them, implied they were cowards, and told them there was “no honour” in brutalising the very people they are supposed to protect. He utilised the contradiction between the stated purpose of the police and their actual purpose to impede police repression
- on behalf of our real enemies, the ruling class."...
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12/1/11, "Exclusive: Inside the offices of Occupy Wall Street," CNN, This Just In
"A block away from the New York Stock Exchange, a few dozen Occupy Wall Street organizers show up to work every day at an office building in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District. The movement may have lost its public face – a handful of protesters appear at Zuccotti Park on any given morning – but the folks who sit at desks inside the office said Occupy is still very much alive despite the recent evictions of encampments across the country.
CNN was granted exclusive access to the office where signs with critical information and phone numbers hang on the walls alongside artwork featuring slogans familiar to the movement. Groups of people cram into the small conference rooms for strategy sessions.
The office space appears to be the movement’s nerve center. But the volunteers who plan future actions, network with other Occupy protests and deal with logistical issues insisted the location is not Occupy Wall Street’s headquarters."...
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"Top Down, Bottom Up, Inside Out:" Occupy staffer says, "Bottom up is core of who we are." Strategy urged by Van Jones in 6/9/2010 speech, "Our challenge is to take care of that bottom up part," beginning at :59 on video.
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