At the
noon start time there are hardly more than 100 folks milling around
Duarte Square, an obscure triangular slice of real estate on the
northwest corner of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. It's
a certifiable Occupy event, complete with street theater, balloon
metaphors, and an impromptu curbside teach-in on the evolution of the
American police state. But for all the Web hype and build up to the
third anniversary of Occupy Wall Street's taking of Zuccotti Park –
dramatically hash-tagged #D17 – it seems uneventful, so I grab
Issue 5 of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and steal a bench down
the block.
When I
return 20 minutes later, the scene's changed dramatically. The
painted and bandana-clad badasses are here – medics, direct action
organizers, soldiers with helmets, gas masks, and a number of hard
steel containers latched onto their knapsacks with carabiners. Small
swarms of other activists also arrive, including rally staples like
Santa Claus, a Bradley Manning tribute teepee, and a drum circle
grooving to the tune of someone chanting “Impeach Obama.” By one
o'clock you'd need a helicopter to count the number of heads on the
ground, especially if you're including cops, who are trolling the
surrounding blocks and park perimeter.
The
celebration and chatter goes on for nearly three hours before
anything pops. But as three o'clock approaches, people begin
whispering instructions to prep for action. Soon enough hundreds start marching,
punching north on Sixth with a caravan of scooter-mounted cops
keeping the crowd packed on the sidewalk. More than ever before I
realize how bad relations are between authorities and Wall Street
Occupiers, as a torrent of insults fly in both directions, with some
protesters calling cops “fat bastards,” and police taunting right
back. Among more than a dozen occupied cities that I've visited, New
York activists are easily the most relentless in their verbal
badgering of officers.
What
first seems like a chaotic march with no clear purpose turns out to
be a clever ruse. Occupiers had been eyeballing a vacant lot –
beside Duarte – that was enclosed in ten-foot chain-link fencing,
so a core team smuggles a towering step ladder in the middle of the
pack. After a loud and distracting stroll around the block they get
back to the lot, the ladder goes up, and brave protesters begin
climbing over the fence – medics, direct action heroes, and retired
Episcopal Bishop George Packard, who winds up being one of about 50
people arrested when cops rush in minutes later. It's a dangerous
scene, and a sure sign of what's to come in the next few weeks.
That's
all by four o'clock, and Wall Street Occupiers are just getting
started. From there they clock some more headlines, splitting up and
stomping uptown in packs. One crew makes its way toward the home of a
Trinity Church rector; the institution owns the land beside Duarte
that they wished to Occupy, and Trinity – a former Occupy ally –
told them to keep out of the abandoned yard. Further north, a second
posse climbs all the way to Times Square, where they scramble the
early evening shopping rush and sing “Happy Birthday” to Bradley
Manning. By the end of the day, they'd made a spectacle for millions to see,
and had a pic go viral of a bishop in a purple robe being handcuffed.
I
traveled to the D17 actions to see first-hand how much gas is left in
the mothership's tank. Occupy Wall Street – while populated by far
more condescending and righteously bohemian soap box salespeople than
any other Occupy – is still the backbone of it all, and the energy
level in New York affects the movement at large. While there's plenty
of post-Dewey excitement at home, it's yet to be seen what kind of
rally numbers Occupy Boston will be able to pull a month after losing
its camp. But if places like Manhattan, Oakland, and Portland are any
indication, they'll be just fine in terms of people power and raw
gusto.
Which
of course leaves more boring elements like streamlining, strategy,
and organization – within and between different cities.
That's where the second day of this critical Occupy Wall Street
weekend focused, as there were two conferences – not mere meetings,
but legit conferences – for the movement held on Sunday. The first,
an all-day “InterOccupation Unconference” with 350 registered
participants at Pace University, is a mixed bag of proposed workshops
on everything from self-defense and farming to “Meta Movement
Building,” the latter of which showcases some theoretical concepts
that address how the kind of momentum bubbling the day before can be
channeled moving forward.
There
have been countless academic essays, panels, and lectures on Occupy
since this all started, as a number of self-important gasbags purport
to know precisely how the movement should proceed, and have fed ideas
ranging from absurd to generic into a confusing noise chamber in
which more people talk than listen. But now, at such a crucial
juncture, it's a relief to see somewhat practical points being made
by speakers like group dynamics guru Clay Shirky and Walt Roberts
from the Coffee Party, which is focused on what could be feasible
Occupy goals – namely reforming Wall Street, the tax code, and
campaign finance laws.
There
are some big words tossed around at the movement building workshop,
and even a philosophy student who manages to say nothing whatsoever
in her few minutes at bat. But Roberts makes a solid point about how
the dynamic “meshwork” of Occupy interests and infrastructures
might evolve. Specifically, Shirky emphasizes that it's time for
individuals and even working groups to figure out what they do best,
then do it, and kindly encourage others to do the same. From there the
concept is that good ideas will flourish, while bad ones will
evaporate. Among the onlookers, there's consensus that the movement
already functions as such a filter.
Meanwhile,
over at the New School, there's an “Occupy Onwards”
conference. A much more formal event, this one is sponsored by Verso
Books, the literary magazine N+1, and the impressive Occupy! Gazette
broadsheet. There I catch a panel on “Lessons from the
Past/Possible Futures,” which only turns out to be half the waste
of time that I expected. L.A. Kauffman of the Global Justice
Movement, whose relevant experience includes participating in and
covering the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, was
especially enlightening in her observation that OWS protesters should
be cautious of getting too addicted to the daily rush of in-your-face
activism.
Yotam
Marom of the OWS direct action working group also makes a heap of
sense, stressing that the movement can't look in two years the way that it
looked over the first two months. People have to shower, to see their
families. Fine points withstanding though, I can't help but notice
that those hearing these messages by and large are not the ragtag
activists who hopped the fence by Duarte a day earlier. In fact they
don't represent the movement's racial diversity at all – I count
just one black face and two Asian people in the whole room. I'm not sure
what that means, but it's certainly worth noting for anyone who
thinks communities of color should be increasingly involved.
It's
premature to make much sense of what I learned in New York this
weekend. Occupiers are fired up, and working hard on both actions and
institutional advancements. There's also a general feeling that short
term wins – and lots of them, in the street and in the political arena – are
necessary to sustain the next phase of OWS. Still, despite advanced
possibilities for disseminating info, it's yet to be seen whether
more technologically disparate factions of the movement will remain
connected in the wake of the camps. If the most educated and involved
OWS entities can't even manage to schedule important conferences on
different days, then it should be interesting to see how the entire
movement inter-occupies onward.
Latest Slideshows
