by Mike Carr Submitted to Portside by the author
Published by Portside November 22, 2011
Electrifying ... exhilarating ... momentous ... remarkable ... incredible ... effective ... these are only a few of the supercharged words I have plucked out of various articles on the 99% movement by such as Angela Davis, Francis Fox Piven, David Harvey, and others used to describe the 99% movement. In only a little over 2 months, this incredibly dynamic movement has already effected a massive shift in U.S. public consciousness and shifted the political discussion to a new level of open critique of capitalism. For the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a previously moribund U.S. labor movement is again stirring. As Francis Fox Piven wrote, "Its [the 99%] energy will supercharge the arduous work other organizations have been doing for years, amplifying their actions as well as their agendas". Indeed, it already has been doing just that. Political, economic and social ideas are under review by millions of working people, and by those who no longer have work and/or have lost their homes as a result of the sub- prime mortgage rip-off.
Then, along comes Michael Engel in Monthly Review Magazine with a piece obnoxiously titled, "OWS:RIP?" to give some unsupportive advice that the 99% should abandon what he calls "the tent cities" on its own. If fact he even goes so far as to say that the police are doing OWS a favor by moving them out of the parks and plazas! Engel, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and a union "activist", claims that OWS has been "most creative in coining slogans" should now march to a new slogan, "out of the Parks and Into the Communities". Moreover, participants in the movement should also abandon "their explicit rejection of the organizational elements that lead to political victory - ideology, structure, and leadership". Wow! Professor Engel has obviously not participated in any of the organizational activities of the 99%. Nor has he done his research on OWS. If he had he would know that OWS groups across the US and in Canada where I am from are in fact organized into many different committees all doing ongoing work of outreach to other movements, to the media both capitalist and community media, to labor, and a whole range of other organizational and outreach work. Has the Professor not heard of all the other actions being organized by OWS??? The marches to the Stock Exchange, The White House, the solidarity actions in support of labor, the work of caring for the down and out homeless people and drug addicts who inevitably come to the spaces occupied by OWS participants, or the Oakland General Strike? Is occupying Wall Street not enough "ideology" for Engel? Is the messaging of the 99% against the 1% not an ideological message? Of course it is, moreover, its ideology in action that has inspired millions of people, not only in the US, but around the world. Where has the Professor been? Shut up in his ivory tower? The most powerful and effective ideological message in 70 years, and Michael Engel has missed it. Inexcusable, especially for a Professor of Political Science. But maybe, that is his problem --- political "science".
Engel has also missed another key symbolic issue, the Occupation of actual public space, space that has increasingly been privatized over the past 4 decades in US and Canadian cities at least, space such as Liberty Plaza. In fact, the re-naming of the privatized Zuccotti Park and its occupation as Liberty Plaza is intensely ideological, another example of ideology in action, the reclaiming and renaming of public space. As urban geographer David Harvey has written about this symbolic/ideological issue, "It shows that the collective power of bodies in public space is still the most effective instrument of opposition when all other means of access are blocked".
The Professor has also missed another crucial and inspiring aspect to the 99% movement, its power in building communities of resistance, not in some private kitchen table meetings, but in re-claimed public spaces. Angela Davis stressed this key part of the 99% movement. "In a strikingly different configuration, this new Occupy Movement imagines itself from the beginning as the broadest possible community of resistance - the99%, as against the 1%" ... Occupy activists are thinking deeply about how we might incorporate opposition to racism, class exploitation, homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, violence done to the environment and transphobia into the resistance of the 99%". How does Davis know this?? Well, she actually goes down to join the occupiers and dialogue with them. Professor Engel should try it.
The 99% movement has inspired a moribund labor movement to new ways of thinking and organizing. According to NYC retail store union leader Stuart Applebaum, "the Occupy movement has changed unions - both in the area of membership mobilization and messaging". Now unions are beginning once again to target the capitalist ruling class (the 1%) as the enemy. Examples include the key contract fights at Verizon and other Fortune 500 companies. In Late October Verizon workers marched through lower Manhattan in solidarity with OWS along with NYC teachers, teamsters and transit workers. In upstate New York, members of CWA Local 1118 held an OWS inspired "corporate pig roast" around the corner from "Cuomoville", the OWS occupation in downtown Albany. At this event Verizon workers invited occupiers to join them as they carried new placards with a pointed, `ideological' message, "We are the 99%". Labor's public relations people are also using Twitter, Tumblr and other social media much more aggressively inspired by OWS use of social media. The Teamsters have beefed up their daily blog and posted many more photos of their battles with BMW, US Foods and Sotheby's on Facebook and Twitter. Says, Appelbaum, "You'll see more unions on the street, wanting to tap into the energy of OWS". And, inspired by OWS, labor leaders are talking increasingly of mobilizing the rank and file though large, boisterous marches. And it has worked in the other direction as well. George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U., representing over 300,00 health care workers has said his union wants to help the OWS movement amplify its voice. "This is a dream come true for us to have these young people speaking out about what's been happening to working people". His union offered to provide 500 flu shots and a weeks worth of meals for the OWS participants. As a union person surely Engel must be aware of such developments, but he chooses to ignore them.
What about the collaboration between Occupy Oakland and labor to successfully shut down the Port of Oakland for a day on Nov. 2nd? That general strike was a major victory and example for all of us. With only a week to organize it and though lacking acknowledged "leadership", the day's events -- with activities focused for each constituency -- were remarkably varied, well planned and coordinated. Teachers, students, nurses, many union locals, workers, disabled, bicyclists, parents with children, residents, and visitors of all constituencies and diversity, and from many outside locals made up the assemblage of occupiers. Major downtown stores were closed, and all main offices of national banks were marched on and were also closed. Up to 30,000 people participated in the actions. The decision to organize the general strike was taken at a general assembly of OO on October 26th by 96% of the 2,000 participants. I suggest to Professor Engel that the old structure and leadership he speaks of would have been inadequate to such successful organizing.
Structure is an issue for Engel. By structure he means "Groups on the left must adopt coherent models of structure and decision-making that clarify and routinize lines of accountability without sacrificing democratic procedures". Not surprisingly then, Engel doesn't like consensus decision-making, or as some in OWS call it "collective thinking". Engel's approach requires developing what he calls "leadership groups" and "established leadership". To me this suggests OWS should develop a process of democratic centralism, the old and failed Leninist model of vanguard party organizing. Well Professor, those methods have failed, and they have failed in many different countries. Democratic socialism of the 21st century is abandoning these failed methods. They rely on vanguardism. Vanguardism - in practice - has failed the working class by ignoring the abilities of mobilized workers and civil society to develop their own models of democracy through their own protagonism in the struggle for emancipation and freedom. Such Leninist methods in the language of the 99% are viewed as the "verticals" as opposed to the "horizontals".
David Graeber speaks about precisely the struggle between the verticals and the horizontals within the first general assembly to organize the occupation of Wall Street in August. At first the verticals had organized a coalition of top-heavy traditional protest groups with traditional demands against the budget cuts, etc. Graeber and the other horizontals realized they had been tricked because the meeting had been called to organize an assembly, not a traditional march and rally around demands. "So we kind of went over to the side and started our own general assembly and they tried to call us back and there was this whole tug of war. And eventually we won. Everybody came over to our side, they gave up on the rally".
When I went to the first general assembly on Oct. 8th in Vancouver to organize Occupy Vancouver we used the assembly method and the voice mic even though there was no restriction not to use an electric speaker system as there was in NYC. There were hundreds of people at the meeting. It was the largest planning meeting I'd ever been to in my life and I've been an activist for 40 years. The spirit at the meeting was totally amazing, a spirit of optimism, of hope, of cooperation, and of solidarity. I felt like it was the first day of the revolution. I told several friends at the assembly that I had been waiting for this day all my life, a bit of rhetoric to be sure, but it felt like that. With that reflection, I'll finish this response to Engel and to all those who still cling to the old, failed methods of organizing.
In a mere two months, the 99% movement has spread like an inspirational wildfire across the US and around the world. What does that look like to me? It looks like a social revolution whereby what normally takes years to accomplish is accomplished in weeks. Yes, it is true that the OWS movement has not come together around a common program or set of solutions. After only two months the movement is still in its infancy. Although millions support it in many different ways, many millions more are still not involved. OWS cannot --- nor should it --- take the place of an organized working class and civil society. Only the peoples united can do that. To be liberated the people must be the protagonists in their own struggles for liberation and genuine democracy. Even Lenin understood this.
What the 99% movement has touched off is really an emergent social revolution. The people of the US, Canada and the world are waking up from the long nightmare of capitalism. The OWS movement is providing a model for a better way to organize and is constantly reaching out to people and other organizations, calling on people to organize in their own communities, to organize their own assemblies as they have a constitutional right to do in the US at least. The assemblies themselves can be seen as an incipient form of peoples' councils and self-organized direct institutions of self-governance in the making. Unfortunately, Michael Engel has not understood this.
[Mike Carr is a reluctantly retired Sessional Instructor from Simon Fraser U. in Vancouver BC. He holds a Ph.D. in Community & Regional Planning from UBC. He has been a social & community activist for 40 years. Carr currently lives in Havana, Cuba with his family.]