Talking about a revolution
A fascinating and unwieldy movement in search of a narrative
Apr 7th 2012 | from the print edition
Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America. By Writers for the 99%. Haymarket Books; 217 pages; $15. OR Books; £10. Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America. Edited by Astra Taylor, Keith Gessen and others. Verso; 216 pages; $14.95 and £9.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
99 Nights with the 99 Percent: Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution. By Chris Faraone.Write to Power; 224 pages; $14.99. Buy from Amazon.com
SINCE their irruption half a year ago, Occupy Wall Street and its ilk have created a new political slogan—the 99% against the 1%—and a new catchphrase: “Occupy X” is now a synonym for all subversive disruption, where X can be anything from the court system to Valentine’s Day. But maxims aside, the movement has always struggled to explain its agenda to the world.
That has much to do with its anti-hierarchical structure: no central authority, no single ideology, no unified set of demands. For most journalists, accustomed to clear leaders and talking points, this makes the movement a slippery and exasperating subject. The flip side is that from the activists’ point of view, as one of the writers in “Occupying Wall Street” puts it, “mainstream coverage of Occupy Wall Street has been a fickle, ornery beast,” alternating between indifference and obsession. Even the attentive left-wing American media—from old-time bastions such as Mother Jones, the Nation and Z Magazine to newer arrivals such as Salon.com, Current TV (a political news site) and n+1(a cultural journal)—have remained, at most, enthusiastic observers. These outlets may carry polemics from the movement’s leading lights and serve as occasional arenas for debate, but none has become a devoted forum.
Distrustful of outside agendas, the Occupy movement has chosen to build its own media instead. Besides using social networks such as Twitter and YouTube to organise and document its activities, devotees employ a bewildering array of websites. Each Occupy chapter around the world has a site for its “general assembly”, the collective decision-making group that is the nearest thing to an official body. There are several national sites with confusingly similar names—occupywallst.org, occupywallstreet.org and (still under construction) occupywallstreet.net, plus occupytogether.org, occupycafe.org, interoccupy.org and others—each with its own constituency and focus. Debates rage on e-mail lists and Facebook groups over everything from campground sanitation to whether police officers are agents of class warfare or fellow victims of it. Off the web there have been a pair of sporadic print newspapers, a couple of documentary films and at least three books.
Of these, “99 Nights with the 99 Percent”, a series of vignettes from assorted Occupy encampments by Chris Faraone, a Boston-based journalist, is the best read. Though absolutely pro-Occupy, Mr Faraone retains some critical perspective. He paints a telling picture of the mix of exhilaration, boredom, confusion and absurdity that accompanies the growth of a grassroots movement. He even profiles a con man who scammed Occupy Boston into giving him control of its finances.
“Occupying Wall Street” by “Writers for the 99%” is a largely self-congratulatory collection of pieces by various activists. And “Occupy!”, an anthology from the occasional Occupy Gazette published by n+1, includes reflections on such dilemmas as how to deal with the drummer-occupiers, who see any request to stop drumming as a grave assault on their right to self-expression, even if this means preventing others from sleeping at night. There is also a lovely piece on the difficulties of organising an occupation’s laundry, which works as a handy metaphor for some of the movement’s larger challenges.
But these books are more or less boosterish. None examines the movement’s basic goals in depth; instead, they exemplify its unwieldy belief in letting every voice be heard. This pluralism makes the Occupiers very good at talking to themselves, but less good at making themselves understood to outsiders, even sympathetic ones. This may be one reason why a movement that claims to represent 99% of the population has managed to mobilise only a small fraction of its constituents.
“The theoretical principles of the movement, total horizontality and openness, run counter to what seems to make effective media,” observes David Sauvage, a film-maker, who this week launched yet another site (with an enviably tidy URL), occupy.com. When all one had to do to get involved was show up at an Occupy camp, he says, the barrier to entry was low. But now that most of these encampments have been dismantled, it is harder to know where to start. His site aims to reinvigorate participation by serving as a media-savvy repository for stories, photographs and video from the Occupy trenches, coupled with easy routes to taking part.
Unlike the “effective media” that this site aims to emulate, Mr Sauvage does not intend to craft a larger narrative out of these individual voices. But with Occupiers trying to rally support for a general strike on May 1st, they will need to communicate with people who might join if only they could know what exactly they were joining. For potential sympathisers, a coherent, collective story may be easier to grasp than lots of personal ones.
from the print edition | Books and arts
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