When, in July, Adbusters called for an occupation of Wall Street starting on September 17, it asked, “What is our one demand?” Online discussions began about what that might be, in the hopes that it could be settled ahead of time, and Adbusters even suggested a few of its own, like calling for a new anti-corruption commission (a la Anna Hazare’s controversial proposal in India) or the revocation of corporate personhood. There has also been talk about a Tobin tax, or the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, or other wonky policy proposals.
After almost two weeks of occupation in renamed Liberty Plaza, the protesters have yet to settle on any one demand, or even on the idea that they want one. (This doesn’t mean it isn’t rather obvious why a bunch of angry Americans would be making a fuss at the exact center of their country’s concentrated wealth and reckless corruption.) Still, their evening General Assembly meetings—which are devoted to big-picture items like demands—have been busy. The Assembly has so far approved two significant documents about what it stands for, documents that are indicative of what the experience of the occupation is doing to those taking part. Many who came with a particular demand in mind, even, are changing how they think about what politics, and political activism, can look like.
“This is not about the demands,” said occupier Amin Husain at a General Assembly meeting on Monday night. “The demands will come. It’s about the beautiful thing we’re doing here.” The demand, so far, appears to be a process—one in which all people can speak and money can’t.
Last Friday, September 23, in the rain, a statement called “Principles of Solidarity” was passed by consensus by the General Assembly as a working draft. (This qualification is important—again, process.) The “Principles” states in its preamble a complaint about “the blatant injustices of our times perpetuated by the economic and political elites.” The principles themselves, though, are all about method:
- Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
- Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
- Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
- Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
- Redefining how labor is valued;
- The sanctity of individual privacy;
- The belief that education is human right; and
- Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.
These, one might notice, have as much to do with what the occupiers are doing in their encampment as with any change they might want to make as the society as a whole. They’re practicing direct democracy in the General Assembly; they’re talking a lot about privilege and oppression; nobody is being paid for labor, but all are benefiting from it; teach-ins and a library provide for makeshift education; open-source software and methods are fueling the movement’s websites and other media. (With seemingly more cameras around the plaza than people, though, privacy is still only an ideal.) The “Principles of Solidarity” promises, at the end, that “demands will follow.”
The document that, in turn, followed it was a “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” passed with the usual cheers in September 29’s evening Assembly meeting:
THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!
We will vote on that now. Straw poll. Looks good!
CONSENSUS!
WOOT WOOT!
Yet this contains no demand either; instead, it’s a litany of injustices perpetrated by “corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality” and which “run our government.” More than that, though, the “Declaration” is a call to action, an insistence that “it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors.”
After the litany—which mentions such concerns as workplace discrimination, poisoning the food supply, corruption of the legal system, media manipulation, militarism, and more (footnote: “*These grievances are not all-inclusive.“)—the “Declaration” addresses the “people of the world”:
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
People do indeed seem to be joining. (WNV contributor Alyce Santoro has echoed this call with one of her own for people to “Occupy Everywhere.”) Currently, the website OccupyTogether.org lists 85 cities and towns in the United States where occupations have begun or are in the works. In many of these cases, too, it appears that horizontal, directly-democratic assemblies are being used to organize and self-govern, just like at occupied Wall Street.
The occupation is becoming more than a discrete action with a single demand, as Adbusters first conceived of it. Instead, the occupation seems to be swelling into a movement, a mode of organizing that is capable of handling many kinds of complaints, at many levels of society. After the economy collapsed in Argentina in 2001, assemblies like this formed to govern neighborhoods, factories, towns, and national movements. One of their slogans was, “Occupy, Resist, and Produce.” What started as a protest turned into a lasting way of life.
Like the refrain of the Indignados in Spain—“Real Democracy Now”—these new assemblies are enunciating a demand by carrying it out for themselves. They are being the change they wish to see in the world, as Gandhi said, working for justice with methods worthy of their goal.
During the day, crowds gather around the collage of hundreds of cardboard signs that lines the northern edge of the plaza. Each makes its own separate demand, but together they have a certain coherence: “Peaceful Revolution.” “Bail Out the People.” “Wall Street Is Our Street.” Those who stop to read them are transfixed, as if having a silent conversation with each other over the blaring of drums and the plucking of banjos. They seem, somehow, satisfied.
nathan, thank you for this excellent, excellent piece. here’s how i tweeted about it (my best tweet ever!?):
brilliant #occupywalllstreet strategy baffles the mainstream: we will demand people-run democracy by living it.
been up to my earlobes in reading, scrambling to connect dots, figure out ways to effectively contribute from afar. revisiting hakim bey’s “temporary autonomous zones”(TAZ) – although i don’t agree with everything bey has to say, the wall street occupation is a beautiful living example of a TAZ. the media black-out – the mainstream’s inability to comprehend it in general – is one sure way to tell…
bey says:
“…[the TAZ’s] greatest strength lies in its invisibility – the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it.”
the media can’t see occupy wall street, because it’s not mediate-able. it’s a constantly unfolding participatory happening. it falls entirely outside the system that it is seeking to transform.
another relevant quote from TAZ:
“History says the Revolution attains “permanence,” or at least duration, while the uprising is “temporary.” In this sense an uprising is like a “peak experience” as opposed to the standard of “ordinary” consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day – otherwise they would not be “nonordinary.” But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life.”
lastly, “the” quote from bucky:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” R. Buckminster Fuller
perhaps in practice it takes some of both. thank you, occupiers, for fighting the existing reality AND pioneering the building of the new model that is making the old one obsolete.
Corporate personhood must first be revoked. That’s my first demand. The reason there are so many corporate robots in the U.S. Congress is because for-profit corporations have the same rights as people.
#ows does not need to have demands. It is an autonomous zone not governed by elected politicians but by twitter algorithms and collaborative filtering. This may be the precursor of the US (or the world?) entering into the information age. In this age the direction a society goes will be determined by open source algorithms on the internet and collaborative filtering and not by politicians. There will be no more corporations using tools like people’s health or cars to make profit. There will be organizations governed by the same algorithms and collaborative filtering to make cars, iphones and take care of the sick. Organizations will exist because several needs of the society like making cars or building homes are too complex for one person to carry out. But these organizations will not be guided by profit. They will function the same way as #ows on wall street does now. A new currency, the bitcoin will be introduced, so the fat cats can keep their dollars. You can fight it or join it. It is up to you.
This is intriguing, but you have to explain it in a way people can understand. you have a vision for the future- how will it be put into place? Will you take it upon yourself to educate others about it? What are your inviolable core principles? Is this a utopian ideal?
Oh, also- I don’t have to fight it or join it. I can simply observe it as well.
Another thought- this might not lead to a leaderless society. It may lead to a society dominated by engineers and technocrats. those who understand the programming language of the source-ware are those who make the limits. I want to understand you, so that I can decide whether or not to support what you are doing.
Ryan, the code will be open source. Thousands of people will understand the code if one has any doubt about the fairness of the program they can just twit about it. This is how linux is written – an operating system thought by a lot to be lot more stable than microsoft’s. Its free. People of this planet did not write it for money or a profit. I know a lot of people who just taught themselves. It is hard to explain collaborative filtering in such a small space. Please look it up on Wikipedia.com. But this is what #ows does with the thousand of twits of twitter, even if they don’t know it. BTW you are right, you can also observe. That is what I do. Whatever the majority of the people want will happen. Only the people can control it.