It has been surprisingly hard for me to come to any solid conclusions on what I think about OWS. I think I’m practically there and hope that the process of writing this will bring me to the conclusion that I have almost pieced together.
I observed from afar until yesterday. I only consume curated news in the hope that I can maintain the most well-rounded view of events possible. I take in only the amount that I feel I have the energy and time to fully process myself lest I unintentionally write to my own memory borrowed understanding of events through others. Its wonderfully efficient that humans have the tendency to do this and also incredibly dangerous.
I’ve had this sense that something isn’t quite right, that I don’t really understand what’s happening. I’ve asked myself if what I’m picking up on is the aimless nature and lack of unified message that the movement? protest? community? seems to have. I think there’s something there, but that doesn’t fully answer it. I’ve had moments of self-doubt: am I not as dedicated to the cause of bettering life for all as I’d thought? No, that’s not it, either. I don’t feel any pull toward OWS, in fact, if anything, I feel repelled from it a bit.
So I went down there yesterday. Dan and I got there in time to be at the General Assembly. Since I haven’t really been following the minutia of what is happening, I was surprised and a tiny bit impressed to find that a system had been worked out to hold meetings in the park containing perhaps a couple hundred people and that working groups had been formed. That was probably the most positive I felt the entire time, however.
It was all extremely fascinating as a study of how societies form. The people at Zuccotti have formed more of a commune than a protest. It seemed to me that instead of being a people taking to the streets to demand change and refusing to leave until their demands are met, that they happened to pick this point in the world to begin an entirely new society, which makes the “Occupy” bit a whole lot more accurate than the “Wall Street” part, given that they are still a few blocks north.
It tickled me to see the library, information desk, kitchen and food line. I might have been impressed if I were in a refugee camp or similar. During yesterday’s General Assembly, the first hour was spent talking about the round-the-clock drumming that has been happening, which the Community Board has asked been limited to daytime hours. There is apparently contention around this issue - some park “residents” think that complying will help ensure longevity of the occupation, others feel that it is their right to drum into the night. If you ask me, one drummers’ plea for solidarity by sharing that 2.5 hours of drumming after a recent march was not enough for her soul was overshadowed by an older woman of color, a resident of the neighborhood and representative of the Community Council, who asked the group to comply as the drumming was driving her and her neighbors, who support the movement, nuts.
After this incredibly tedious discussion, given that the only method of voice amplification in the park is a multi-wave human microphone, I decided to do a full circuit of the park. The dynamics and differing opinions that I saw during the meeting were matched with a division through the middle of the park so drastic that you could call it a border. The half of the park closest to Broadway is fairly open apart from tables on which people were making signs and doing other general preparation work. This is where the library is, an information table, an outreach table! It is coordinated and clean. The half of the park closest to the World Trade site is practically covered in tarp, held down by bodies. When you think of the phrase dirty hippie, and I mean to leave out the negative connotations, the residents of this area epitomize it. This is where the drummers are and the stench is putrid. If there was a clean that morning in preparation for eviction, I don’t want to know what it smelled like prior.
I went right outside the park on the Broadway sidewalk and stood to observe. A line of NYPD officers stand against a temporary barricade between the sidewalk and street. Protesters with signs line the park side. One was holding a sign that was meant to taunt the cops “Well, look who’s still here” referring to the protesters’ “victory” that morning as Brookfield/NYC decided to let them stay and forego cleaning of the park.
I’ve wondered what the hell these people could possibly think could come out of this. Uprisings often start and end successfully as a populous taking to the streets, but this all seemed strange. We don’t live in a dictatorship, there is no decision making that is happening this moment that can shift the political tides. Those moments have passed. Where was this group then?
My conclusion has been that this movement must be made up mostly of people who don’t quite understand the reality and complexity of the system in which we live. I can fully understand this. I’ve so often misdiagnosed our ills and have adopted blanket solutions as the cure, just to find that I was terribly wrong. It is very easy to fail to see the way in which things are actually working ok when you’ve never experienced anything else.
Watching hundreds of people spend two hours going over administrative items in this fledgling society, seeing the division between two camps within the society that had formed in only weeks, it made me realize how much we DO have. I said to someone on Twitter that I give it a week before their direct democracy becomes completely unmanageable and that calls for representatives would start to be heard. Watching all of these people spend so much time on mundane tasks in the middle of something that is supposed to change the world is peculiar, sad and mind-boggling. We seem to have forgotten that we’ve made the technical, scientific, medical and other breakthroughs that we have because of the Specialist. We have careers and typically focus on becoming masters at one, maybe two things because that is most efficient and benefits us all. When we don’t have systems to handle the minutia more efficiently, we lose effectiveness. Instead of coming up with ways to get more people involved, to be more effective as a movement, two hours were spent talking about drumming hours and whether to reimburse someone for an expenditure they put on their personal debit card.
Another thing that struck me was a comment from the crowd when consensus was looking to be met regarding this reimbursement. Someone asked about transparency, and wanted to see receipts.
Aha. Another “and so it begins” moment, much as when I’d witnessed the border and the utter inefficiency of admin in this little community. Granted, it is absolutely something I’d like to see tamed, but it becomes essential at a certain point to give up all of the respect and fairness stuff and resort to hard, impersonal proof to avoid being taken advantage of. I wonder if this person who was interested in transparency would also complain of arrests happening as police ensure safety by upholding park closings, keeping people out of roads, etc. Yes, the cops can be dicks, but I think any of us would be. Its a job that requires that the benefit of the doubt not be given at times.
That border in the park signified to me a split between those who are dedicated to the cause and are willing to compromise and those who seem to have this sense of entitlement. I’m still incredulous that its such a matter of contention that people be asked not to drum through the night. For a community that prides itself on respect and fairness, this is ludicrous to me. How about those who need to sleep, both in the park and the neighborhood? How is your need to express yourself more important than the basic needs of potentially thousands of others? Its completely laughable to me, and unfortunate proof of what I feared to find - that the people occupying this park, like so many of my peers, seem to feel entitled many luxuries which they have confused as rights.
I’ve heard people say that the crowd at Zuccotti is diverse. I didn’t find this to be true. The vast majority of people are young, though its true that they do seem somewhat racially diverse. I did find latinas and asians to be very underrepresented. There are some people who are middle-aged or older, but if I’m honest, by and large those who I came across struck me as people who are poorly educated. Not that this disqualifies their views of course, but diverse to me means people of the spectrum of ages, ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic levels. 99%? Hardly.
That may be what I take issue with most of all. This “we are the 99%” idea. I agree that there is drastic room for improvement in economic and opportunal equality in our country, absolutely. However, I feel like we, even us urban and progressive Americans, have lost sight of our place in the world. There is a graphic going around that shows a picture of American protesters and then a picture of starving African children and says something to the extent of “when you win, remember that you’re still the 1% to the rest of the world”. Even the most disadvantaged among us have better access to life-sustaining resources and opportunity. This does not negate the need for people to drive quality of life for all forward, but it seems incredibly privileged of all of us - all genders, ethnic backgrounds, income levels - to live within an entity that has done so much harm and failed so many around the world and only start to stand up when we feel infringed upon.

I’m not a sociologist, not am I a historian, but if the aim of this movement is to end up with a democratic system that is more level and direct, then I’m not sure peaceful protest will do. There is no single figurehead to take down, there is no other direct route. If this isn’t the aim, I’m not sure what can come of it.
I think about the riots that happened in England a couple of months ago and see much of the same in the OWS group. I remember growing up here not so long ago and feeling like there was nothing to be a part of. I had no voice, no place, nothing to identify with and no avenue to affect society. I also heard an older man explaining that he was there because he “missed out on Vietnam”. I think that is the crux of this movement, like the England riots, and I’m not sure this particular flavor is going to make for any sort of outcome. Its like just showing up is winning the battle, being a part of something exciting, and while I completely understand that feeling, I’m not sure it has any value in this society. Again, there is no figurehead to remove and there is no single building to topple. Drastic, sudden change in this country can only come of anarchy, otherwise it is not realistic.
I would join a general protest if it were a response to the unprecedented assassination of an American citizen, or to any of our needless military actions. I’d protest policy. Something about protesting actions that have occurred months after the fact makes it feel disjointed. Protest aimed at entities which you don’t understand and are not accountable to you, i.e. the financial industry, is very misguided.
Folks, I’m guessing that the rational among you want campaign finance reform, a commission to seal up laws that encourage income disparity and treat companies as individuals. I could be behind this, too.

If I’m honest, as much as I try, I can’t help but scoff at many of the activists. The amount of paranoid and misinformed drivel I’ve heard is scary. I was handed a copy of The Occupied Wall Street Journal. On the front page is an article entitled This Rebellion Will Not Stop. It begins with “The lords of finance in the skyscrapers surrounding Zuccotti Park…” and aims to convince us that the elites are the fat, suspender-wearing, cigar-smoking pigs of political cartoons of old with language soaked in the desire to be compared to such materials of movements past. Such as “the elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible”. I don’t claim that there isn’t truth buried in here somewhere, but slathered in this language, I can’t take it seriously.
The lords of finance in the skyscrapers around Zuccotti Park. Well, I guess that may be, but that’s not my experience. Zuccotti Park of old holds a lot of memories for me - of cheap lunches and breaks from painful high heels and the dread of going back into the office. I worked in two of those skyscrapers - 150 Broadway and One Liberty Plaza.
My first job in NYC was in 150 Broadway at a small woman owned and operated PR firm. My boss there was a tyrant who viewed underfed children in Malawi as a marketing technique, so I can’t defend her, really, except that her sphere of influence is rather limited. At One Liberty, I worked for FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Quite a few floors in the building are dedicated to this agency and while you may debate their effectiveness, I’d say that they are the enemy or at least bane of those financial lords. I made a whopping $9/hr in my time here, which was barely enough to cover my rent, let alone any other expenses. Still, even though my work was mindless, I had the sense that I might be part of something worthwhile for the first time since moving to NYC.

Yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a friend who mirrored what I was thinking about how I might be perceived by some in the OWS crowd as someone who had decided to play nice with society and be realistic about providing for myself. It was a relief to hear that someone else considered what I did - what if I were walking into One Liberty, going to work, while the OWS folks were across the street? What would they think of me? Would they say anything to me? Would their signs taunt me, like the NYPD who are doing their jobs? How do these people have a right to talk about the “elites [who] consider everyone outside their sphere marginal” when judgements might be passed on me for trying to make my paltry living and something of myself? Is it a crime in my generation to be passionate about some left ideals and realize that we must work hard, whatever shape that takes, to provide for ourselves?

I find politics laughable because there does not seem a point to tossing a ball back and forth across a line with the same arguments designed to defend your side vs. see things in a well-rounded way. There is no point to us vs. them, progress exists in understanding, compassion and compromise. Yesterday, OWS had about $125k in contributions. I can’t help but think of what could be accomplished if those funds were behind a goal and a workforce instead of being used to buy containers for random personal items. I’m sure that there are individuals who have strong ideas and the intellect to act on them meaningfully, but all I see is a group of people who don’t quite understand what they’ve got, don’t (yet?) have the worldly perspective required to make good judgements about these issues and are reacting from their gut and not their heads. I hope that it will serve to open the way for a more meaningful movement, but unfortunately, right now I feel like its widening a divide among us.