How a City Shapes an Occupation

I’m watching how group dynamics develop and are shaped by the differences in settings and historic influences in each city.  I am responding to reports from friends and from occupation websites, or other media.  I have been comparing Seattle where I live, with NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Wall Street as we know picked a private park that did not have regulations defining a “closing hour” and thus protesters have been able to sleep in the park.  Despite some efforts on the part of the owners to close it for “cleaning”, they have responded to the pressure of having thousands there and so have not closed it.  Being a large population center has also brought people in droves.

In Philadelphia they occupied a construction site in the center of the city, so they also have not received pressure to move until just recently when they received a letter from city council saying that it now needed to be vacated so construction could start and “claiming that they had agreed to move at that time.”  So OP has started to consider whether they need to move or face arrest.  In the meantime because they are two blocks from Friends Center (the complex the house Friends Journal, the AFSC, and Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting) the protesters have been able to use the kitchen there to feed thousands, and the bathrooms and to have General Assemblies there when it rains.  They have just officially voted to have General Assemblies (GA)’s there whenever the weather is inclement.  I have wonder how having that much support structure and lack of threat of arrest has allowed them to focus on the protests themselves.  The influence of Quakers is so pervasive in Philly that my impression is their GA process is also much better.

In Chicago they chose to be on the Federal plaza outside the Federal Reserve branch that is in Chicago.  The police slowly cordoned off areas to finally only a small amount of sidewalk was left and now they have to be careful to not block people trying to walk on it or they can be arrested for that.  City Ordinance makes it illegal to sleep on the sidewalk, so there is no where for Chicago protestors to sleep.  How OC protestors have handled that is that they are sleeping in cars that they can park on the street at night (but not day)  They have a uhaul they pay for and put their stuff in every night, and they take turn having two hour shifts staying up protesting with signs during the nights.  This I have to say seems so much more sensible and healthier than the sleep deprivation marathon that my Seattle comrade’s have set for themselves!   They were proud that they had no arrests as result.  They have however for two Sat’s in a row tried to occupy Grant Park a few blocks away and play cat and mouse with the police there who will allow them to set up tents but arrest them the minute they go in them.  This has resulted in arrests in Chicago.

In Boston they had two sites, one in Dewey Square across from their Federal Reserve bank and the other in a Conservancy park that actually had posted a very supportive letter about the demonstrators being in the park. Dewey Square had the mayor's permission and had about 50 tents and permanent supply tents. This second Park space was set up because the first became to crowded.  On the night of Oct. 10th the police in riot gear encircled it and then forced all the media away and arrested all the protesters, first approaching a Veteran's for Peace group and beating them.  The mayor and peace blamed their violence on the "anarchists".

But here is Seattle….the site that was chosen Westlake park is a small triangular cement park in the heart of the shopping district.  (Some say the financial district but I don’t see Seattle as really having a banking headquarters.)  There is an ordinance declaring the park closed at 10Pm every night, and it is illegal to sleep in any Seattle park.  So every night at 10pm the hassles with the police start.  The police will allow people to lie on the ground, but any camping gear results in arrest – this means even a camping pad, or an umbrella over you that touches the ground!   There was a call last Sat for “the night of 500 tents”  (They did feel the park with about 150 tents – it isactually too small for 500)  So many people came to support that the police did not want to arrest and so played this game all night where they would walk around, accompanied by a protester who would shout “we are coming to visit your tent” and if the police found the people in the tent with eyes open “not asleep” they did not arrest them.  But when this was repeated Sunday night they came at 3am and arrested everyone there, damaging many tents in the process. 

Sleeping in the park was allowed during the first week while the Mayor tried to negotiate with them claiming always that he favored freedom of speech.  He tried to offer them to move to City Hall where he said they would not be arrested and where they could use the bathrooms at night.  Frankly I thought that was a great offer, but it is true our City Hall is on the edge of downtown and protestors felt this was not visible and that it was all a ploy on the mayor’s part to marginalize our movement and control it.  After the police harassed people so much they could not sleep at night half the protestors moved there anyway to get a good nights sleep, but after two weeks they are closing that site because a lot of homeless non-protesters were coming there and stealing gear, and the protestors at that site felt unsupported by those at the main site.  The cops have taken at Westlake to shining their car lights all night on the protestors and walking around kicking those laying down.  There were numerous GA discussions of possibly moving sites, to including a Community College about 1 mile away which would pass on a general vote but be blocked and fail to win supermajority.  The campers themselves are very divided on this proposal.  Some want to as they are desperate for sleep.  Others define this as defeat or retreat.  This week it has finally passed to on Sat have a Halloween march and move the camp.

So sadly the very sleep deprived “camping protestors” have become more and more angry with the cops which worries me because I do not see a spirit of non-violence instead I see more and more of a spirit of “them vs us”.  I worry that our original choice of site has set us into conflicts with the police and then each other which has detracted from our work.

Some where last week I read that there was a national conference occuring of police chiefs and that they would surely be comparing notes on how to handle their occupations.  "Oh dear I thought" and of course we have seen the esculating of police violence from Boston to Oakland, to various arrests around the country - often violently.  Last night the police rioted on the protestors in Occupy Oakland - causing a severe head injury to an Iraqi vet among the protesters by hitting him in the head with a tear gas canister.  And then as his companions rushed to his aid firing another round on them. How sad indeed that this man came home safely from Iraqi without the concussion injury that so many soilders get, only to be wounded by US police!  It reminds me of the righteous anger of an African American Vet in NYC screaming at the police: You think you are tough, you are hurting unarmed civilians.  They have no guns. Is this what I fought for?  There is no honor in this!  How can you look yourselves in the mirror.

Let us hold in the Light all the brave protesters struggling around the country to see the change we were promised and never got!

99% Rising Up!- A Non-Violent Occupation

You may not know because of the media blackout, that the US is occupied by non-violent protesters who are taking back the US from the major corporations!  It of course started with

Occupy Wall street

23 days ago.  If you have watched Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore this is basically what he called for at the end of his rather damning indictment of Wall Street.  By last week it had spread to LA, Chicago, Seattle, etc.  But still a handful of cities –but then it exploded!  By Sat. 70 major cities and 600 communities were occupied.  Today the website: occupytogether.org (the central organizing website) lists over 1300 communities (go there to check for occupation closest to you!)

Here is a beautifully written story about the Occupy Wall Street demonstration.  http://www.nationofchange.org/we-danced-waiting-police-who-never-came-1318262783  The previous Saturday when 700 protesters where (misled) onto the Brooklyn Bridge by police and then sat down – 700 were arrested making is the largest act of mass act of civil disobedience in decades.  The media has gone from a total black out to what I would now call circus reporting – which is to go and focus on the strangest people there or other ways of trivializing what is going on.  For accurate reports one can go to Facebook/occupywallstreet or one can also find lots of live footage on youtube.

The Groups across the country are committed to a “horizontal process” by which they mean non-hierarchal and consensus based decision making.  Every day they have a “general assembly” where they make decisions.  The Occupy Wall Street group has written a beautiful “Declaration of Occupation”  (Despite the media’s claim that they have no focus and are protesting for “everything”.  I think the media is having a bit of hard time understanding how globalization and corporate personhood has far ranging impacts.)  Click here to read their statement  http://occupyseattle.org/resource/official-statement-occupy-wall-street

A unifying slogan of groups across the country is “We are the 99%” referring to the fact that 1% of the population control 60% of the wealth in this country.

I did go down to Occupy Seattle on Friday (which is at the plaza on the corner of 4^th and Pine).  Unfortunately, Seattle’s general assembly is now happening every day at 6:30 which is when our family eats dinner, so I have not been able to go to a general assembly.  But I did participate in a mini march from the mall to city hall the protest the 10^th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan – how very, very sad.  I also went to one of the many committee meetings that were taking place (they have committees for legal, first aid, food, safety, donations, webpage, etc.).   These tend to meet at 4pm.   I went to the outreach committee, responsible for helping bring more people in.   Because the city will not allow them any microphones or amplification, in order to hear each other they have established a process whereby when someone is recognized by the facilitator to speak they say:  “I have a proposal”  then the group echoes back “I have a proposal”   “that we contact union 47” “that we contact union 47”   It works, but boy if Quakers think consensus if slow….imagine having to repeat everything in small bites, so everything is said twice and then agree!  The one advantage I see this has is that it really discourages long winded people!

While I was there the outreach committee decided they would take to General Assembly, the decision to adopt the Wall Street declaration and come up with our own set of local demands.  Tonight, I understand that will be acted on.

Seattle is a city of rain and the occupation here has been kept alive by people being willing to sleep in the park overnight!  The liberal mayor is allowing them to stay, but last Wed after a week or so, made the police arrest anyone who would not pack up their tent.  So they are having to sleep out without tents.  The mayor has opened up a vacant lot behind city hall for them to sleep in at night and has allowed the “organizing canopy tent” to stay up overnight.  For those of you local – there is a list of things on their website that they need to keep going – please consider buying some of those things and bring them down.  On Friday I brought toilet paper and trash bags and packing tape – now their needs are different.  They are taking turns sleeping in the park without tent while others sleep at city hall.  There are a series of small protests that go out every day from the site to other sites.

When I came home Friday and talked about it my husband said:  “Well this is good, but how will it change things?” Without stopping to think the first words out of my mouth was:  “Well it will certainly make it harder for people in Congress to dismantle Social Security and Medicaid with the cities of the US occupied – harder to not pass the Job’s bill.”   But then this began to percolate in me more when I learned the next day that really truly 600 communities were occupied.  I realized that the word “demands” which is often used by protesters in a way which is a bit grandiose in the sense that we are rarely in a position to demand anything, was actually appropriate here.  I realized that in fact if every Congress person has cities in their district “occupied” with citizens and voters who are fed-up and not taking no for an answer – you actually are in a position to demand change.  Activists have been saying for 4 years that no real change will come out of DC unless there is a movement – well now there is one!  So I realized “hmmm, how long till it is so big that a nation wide general strike can be held.   So I started focusing in earnest on demands.  Below is my not all inclusive list.  (Please respond with your additional ideas).  I have to say there was a freedom in writing this to ask for things we really want that I have rarely felt in my life….try it you will really enjoy it.

Demands

1. An End to Corporate Personhood
2. An increased tax on the wealthiest 2% of America
3. A 6 month wind down to the Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan , Libya and Korea = zero US soldiers occupying those countries.
4. With the “war savings” restore human services to their previous highest level and pay down the national debt- taking our descendants out of debt.
5. A jobs bill that spends money on infrastructure and puts American’s to work
6. An end to subsidies for oil and coal.
7. A subsidy for Alternative energy so we can really get it going.
8. Cancel all consideration of the Tar Sands Pipe Line
9. Set Carbon goals for the US that will aggressively move us to 350 parts per million carbon and sign international treaties to this effect.
10. Abolish the Federal Reserve
11. Create a State Bank in every state.
12. End the illegal foreclosures, refinance all predatory loans.
13. Enforce Corporate monopoly laws
14. Break up Montsanto and Blackwater and the 3 Media monopoly stranglehold
15. Create real Net neutrality
16. Create universal health care in the US
17. NO cuts to Social Security and Medicare- ever
18. Stop producing weapons of mass destruction and immediately begin the unilateral disarmament of the US
19. End the death penalty
20. Reinstate the Glass-Stegall Act

For those of you who know the actor Wallace Shawn, he was interviewed at Occupy Wall Street and said: "I don't know about other people, but I only have one life, so I don't want to live it in a sewer of injustice.  Life is short – it is time to make it count."  These comments remind me of Joanna Macy who is talking about the time of “great turning” that our society is in says:  “What an exciting time to be alive”.  I could not agree more!