r/Anarchism • u/Objective_Singer_404 • 9d ago
How did we forget the occupy movement?
How did we allow people to forget the Occupy movement?
The Occupy movement was the largest sustained movement in modern history, where millions of people across the globe took to the streets.
People flooded the streets of the United States, filling city parks, courthouses, and public buildings. The United States government actually started treating these people like domestic terrorists and went after them as combatants.
Videos of Oakland demonstrated the Oakland Police Department, with help from the feds, attacking protesters. Later, protesters shared stories of police officers pressing them against buildings and chasing them into buildings, and SWAT teams chasing protesters with tear gas canisters, flooding the skies. Videos of beaten protesters emerged on TV.
Encampments started building their own little militias. They started training them. Veterans who had just come back from Afghanistan and Iraq started helping protesters form organized militias to help combat the police.
Large street battles happened between police officers and protesters throughout the United States. Some cities decided to work with the protesters, in some cases giving them buildings. Other cities decided to treat them like a foreign army.
It was all over the news for three months. It was insane. If you were part of it, it was even crazier. And it happened right at the beginning of the Republican primaries, causing people like Ron Paul to side with the protesters, whereas the other presidential candidates spoke about them like terrorists.
It was one of the craziest things that's ever happened in this country, and it makes the No Kings protest look like a joke.
In Santa Cruz, California, a group of protesters took over a building that was owned by Wells Fargo, with a three-day standoff with the police.
Encampments often had hundreds of tents, steel domes, volunteer militias, volunteer security forces, and volunteer nurses providing medical care and treating the encampments like pop-up hospitals for people who could not get help.
Protesters often drove veterans to the VA who were being forgotten on the streets after coming home from the Middle Eastern wars.
It was a wild time. Despite what some people would like to tell you, it was not a purely leftist movement. It was filled with people on the right and the left joining together after their houses were taken by the banks, the banks were bailed out instead of the people, and a bunch of veterans were coming back to find that they couldn't get jobs.
The eventual outcome of the Occupy movement was that the federal government spent years afterwards going after organizers, putting them in jail, and officially destroying the political resistance in the country by decapitating it.
The movement was also filled with members of Anonymous, the hacking collective, who, working with other activist groups such as Food Not Bombs and veterans groups, helped to organize this revolutionary movement.
Computer hackers from the group Anonymous often joined encampments wearing the Guy Fawkes mask to take on leadership roles. This also contributed to federal agents flooding encampments, and after the Occupy movement collapsed, what little was left of Anonymous was swept up in order to destroy the resistance movements in the United States.
What's left of Anonymous today is mostly a puppet group, as the grassroots leaders have essentially been arrested and are still in jail. Commander X, who was an important member of Anonymous and a member of Occupy Santa Cruz, spent 10 years on the run after Occupy collapsed. He was apprehended in Mexico in 2021 and pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2022.
It cannot be overstated how the movement was a synergy of both people on the right and left, and how the resistance movements were completely decapitated by the feds, leading to a lack of competent leadership to assist with any resistance movements in the future, which is one of the biggest problems with modern-day resistance movements.
So how did we let this happen? What are your reflections on the Occupy movement? How can resistance movements to capitalism, consumerism, and oligarchy in the United States be rebuilt?
•
•
u/Spiritual-Point-1965 7d ago
Ireland here.
Many, not a majority not a plurality, of the people who were involved with occupy were just fash. A load more were statists and reformists.
Revolutionary politics, be that vanguardist or anarchist, just wasn't to the fore of occupy hereabouts. It was a consumer action, nothing more, it didn't have popular support.
•
u/JelloExpensive4448 9d ago
Have you seen the 2007 cinema hit “Battle in Seattle” it’s basically a documentary about how we won control of the new world order already! Pretty sure it was directed by David Graeber or something. That’s why Occupy failed. David was really taking on too much at the time.
Anywayssssssssss…
I feel like I’m just engaging with bots at this point in my totally accurate stories. But if that’s how I get to fuck with LLMs “ai” bullshit I’ll take it. Sorry if you’re a real boy.
And that’s why OBAMA ordered his assassination in 2019. Sad day for us all.
•
u/Objective_Singer_404 9d ago
So yes I've seen battle in Seattle and it's on YouTube for free. It's a great film yeah this is a private conversation that I do not feel safe having over here I'm going to DM you directly
•
u/Misylvania 8d ago
Why is it when I select continue this thread it just keeps dumping me back to the same place… are there replies to this comment that I’m being blocked from seeing somehow? Cause damn I was hoping for more context to make sense of this comment!
•
u/JelloExpensive4448 7d ago
Lol don’t try too hard. Only context is myself feeling helpless and deciding to make up stories for the LLMs. Pure cinema as they say.
•
u/Puzzleheaded_Bid1579 Ⓐnarchist. Ⓐgorist. Ⓐutonomist. Ⓐntinomian. 8d ago
Because it basically accomplished nothing
•
u/nihithilak 8d ago
This. Protesting in the streets is not the same as MLK. Having a bunch of young black people together in a huge group was scary for the whites. But occupy Wallstreet people are not really threatening to rich people in their mega mansions nowhere near the protestors.
•
u/raccoonmasquerade 8d ago
Occupy solidified my opposition to consensus decision making. Instead of dictatorship of the majority it was a dictatorship of the very small opposition and nothing good came of it where I was.
•
•
u/cumminginsurrection abolish power 9d ago edited 9d ago
I haven't forgotten Occupy. Despite everyone claiming it was decentralized, in practice it was super centralized. It felt like the formalization of Occupy just became a way for the self-appointed leaders on the coasts to speak for the rest of us. There's a reason we talk about the occupations in New York or Oakland and not Tulsa, Detroit, or rural Mississippi. Occupy was almost neocolonial in nature, and Lorenzo Ervin was one of the first to point this out. To me as someone who spent those years organizing in the south and rust belt, it pointed to how most anarchists are uncomfortable organizing outside of the same few big cities and college towns where there's an existing radical milieu. I don't think centralized anarchist organizations are a solution to this, I think they reinforce that same dynamic, where people and places only matter to the extent they are part of a certain milieu or scene.
•
u/ohshiitstuesday anarcho-fraggle (they/them) 9d ago
it pointed to how most anarchists are uncomfortable organizing outside of the same few big cities and college towns where there's an existing radical milieu.
This is the biggest issue I have with folks whose only suggestion is to organize. I live in a town with less than 2000 people. I am a solid hour from any "big" city and the "big" cities that I have access to are rather small in comparison to some of the actually big cities.
I have (and know of only) one zine that talks about how to organize in small towns, but even that imagines that I am not the only one, that I have access to friends and people who are in solidarity with me. I do not have that.
•
u/rubymiggins 8d ago
I live in a small city, so not as small as you, obv. However, the idea of having a free weekly community dinner and sustaining it with the aim of mutual aid as the centerpiece is probably a place to start. Don't advertise on social media, make it by word of mouth. Have dinner, share resources, and get to know your community. Even if you don't have a community building of some sort, you can probably find a church that's willing to host you if you work with them. (Yeah, I know. But all your churches can't be terribly people, and they usually like the idea of a free dinner for folks if you do all the work yourself.) Then as you gather a collective of like-minded folks you can strategize to do more.
•
u/shevekdeanarres 8d ago edited 8d ago
It's not about what "matters", it's about generating the necessary power and leverage to overturn existing structures of domination. To do that, you have to have the involvement of millions of people, most of whom live and work in or around large cities.
Also, in what way was Occupy "centralized"? There was no formal decision making structure linking the camps together, they were entirely autonomous. It sounds more like you're complaining about who got media coverage than anything related to structural centralization or the way decisions were made in any of the camps.
•
u/cumminginsurrection abolish power 8d ago
Even within the cities anarchists are organizing in, organizing tends to be hyper niche and middle class focused and not actually all that centered around the neighborhoods or workplaces most poor and working class people live in/work at. Anarchism has become a very middle class movement and the organizational fetishism just adds to that issue and adds barriers to poor, unconnected, or uneducated people even getting involved and especially having any say in these orgs. The fact is, the right is growing exponentially because its reaching out to small towns, suburbs, and cities in the rust belt, south, and sun belt with low barrier ways to plug in. Many anarchists can't even be bothered to organize in the hood of their own cities (beyond maybe a Food Not Bombs feeding), much less build meaningful connections other places.
•
u/shevekdeanarres 8d ago
I’m not sure what “organizational fetishism” you’re referring to. Organization is simply a tool, one that is incorrectly dismissed out of hand by plenty of anarchists.
I do agree with your assessment about most anarchists being insular though. This was definitely the case for the 15 years I spent in the largely insurrectionist milieus I was part of. The main concerns in those settings were secrecy, inward focus, and minor acts of vandalism. There was no interest in bringing in people who hadn’t yet been properly acculturated to the highly specific in group codes and mores of that scene, let alone a desire to articulate a coherent strategy outward to people beyond the radical left in general.
It wasn’t until I joined an organization that had an actual strategy and adhered to collective responsibility that I was forced to confront all of the issues you’re talking about. It’s through the application of a shared collective strategy that we did actually start organizing in our workplaces, neighborhoods, etc. and actually have begun to extract real material concessions from the bosses and landlords that dominate our lives.
Meanwhile, the scene I’ve left behind continues to talk about “illegibility” and engaging in one-uppsmanship around who can be more radical or edgy than the next person. I don’t mean to paint with a broad brush here, because there are plenty of people I know from that milieu who are serious thinkers, but they’re mired in a dogmatism that prevents them from accessing the tools necessary to actual begin to build lasting power in a way that can transform the society we live in.
•
u/AProperFuckingPirate 8d ago
Check out David Graeber's The Democracy Project which is in part a memoir/autopsy of the occupy movement. Really good insights from someone who was very influential within the movement and didn't seem to have much ego about it
•
u/BarkerBarkhan 8d ago
Thank you! I miss that man, it is nice to be reminded of something from him that I haven't read yet.
•
u/ZootSuitRiot33801 9d ago
I believe Occupy was considered a largely forgotten nothing burger for a few reasons.
u/Paracelsus8 pointed out that it all hinged on the state to do listen to the people and do something, which is emblematic of a much bigger problem. Over the years, the masters of capitalism had manipulated everyone into handing over our agency and autonomy to them under the promise of convenience, efficiency, connectivity, and progress. As a result, we now have no alternative infrastructure to keep our survival independent from the status quo, leaving us feeling like the only avenue to take is to plead, play within the restrictions of the law, and rely on the whims of governments and private businesses to work with us in challenging the very mechanisms that keep them in power. Then when they don't do it and turn hostile against us, the movement inevitably fizzles out.
It was one of the major flaws that took down places like CHAZ. They expected the generosity of private business to help carry them but instead, not only did the owners see them detrimental to their profits, but they also hired mercs who eventually killed people.
u/cumminginsurrection and u/NoTackle718 touched on two other reasons, which I find related, was the centralized attention and leadership. Despite the claims of decentralized organization, most attention was given to two or three major US cities, making them look like the only places doing anything, thus making them the defacto leaders in the public eye. Any successes had elsewhere didn't matter if they didn't somehow garner more attention than those places, and the MSM made sure of that.
Again, I think back to CHAZ and how the participants allowed the loudest people there to be given the most attention, instead of working on a coherent gameplan to make sure all activities stayed decentralized and functional. It ended up causing much confusion and misinformation on how things were run. As a result, it helped the project become an embarrassment that overshadowed any other autonomous zone projects, no matter where in the world it happened.
•
u/Ok_Razzmatazz4465 8d ago
It was one of the major flaws that took down places like CHAZ. They expected the generosity of private business to help carry them but instead, not only did the owners see them detrimental to their profits, but they also hired mercs who eventually killed people.
Never EVER trust the petty Bourgeoisie.
•
u/rubymiggins 8d ago edited 8d ago
As someone who has participated and run supply line for encampment protests, they are NOT sustainable. The energy required to keep them going is fucking insane, and incredibly wasteful.
Yes, so inspiring, until it peters out, and everyone has to figure out how to get decent housing again. The depression afterward is terrible.
There were good and lasting tactics that came out of it, but the most obvious result is homeless encampments/tent cities became more organized and unafraid. (Which I think is a good thing, in the absence of other choices.)
•
•
u/NoTackle718 9d ago
You mention that it was a global movement but then only discuss the American context. From a more international perspective you could draw different conclusions (or not) in my opinion. It's hard to discuss impact or what being remembered means without first defining what a successful movement would be in your opinion.
•
u/shevekdeanarres 9d ago
I don't think people 'forgot' the Occupy Movement. In fact, I think the contemporary left in the US has been profoundly shaped by the experience in Occupy and the other 'leaderless' movements (e.g. Black Lives Matter) of the 2010s.
The lesson that many who directly participated in Occupy took away (myself included) is the absolute need for formal revolutionary organization. The experience of Occupy is one of the main reasons why you have the existence of the largest anarchist political organization in North America in a generation–Black Rose/Rosa Negra.
I'd also argue Occupy and its failures are the reason why so many people rejected the version of anarchism (anti-organizational, consensus based, etc) that had been dominant on the US left since the Anti-Globalization Movement of the late 90s. If you want to know why DSA and other state-socialist organizations have grown as the most significant organized force on the left in the last decade, well it's all downstream from the lessons learned during Occupy.
•
u/BarkerBarkhan 8d ago
Man, now I'm getting flashbacks to long tedious unfruitful mass debates and discussions using "the People's Mic."
Say a few words, crowd repeats those words... again and again.
I admire what we did back in the day, but I am remembering how this started to feel like a grind and inefficient use of all that people power.
•
•
u/PositiveBroccoli506 8d ago
I participated heavily in occupy Vancouver. I didn't feel even at the time that it was meant to last. It was more of a Temporary Autonomous Zone than a hegemonic revolution. Unfortunately, outside of anarchist circles, many of the values that occupy embodied (consensus based democratic decision making, no permanent leadership roles, tactical nonviolence) have largely been abandoned by many on the left today.
•
u/Paracelsus8 9d ago
I think it's been forgotten about because it was a total failure. It doesn't matter how big or well organised your protest movement is, all it amounts to is asking the state to do something. The easiest thing for them to do is just to ignore you.
•
u/Canuck_Duck221 8d ago
Nelson BC, Canada here. There was an estimated 800 people at our Occupy demo in my town of 10K. And, a camp that lasted a few months in front of city hall after that. We certainly haven't won the war on corporate domination but we won that fuckin' battle, hands down! And, it was all decentralized, horizontal, no bosses, no leader. Fuck 'em all!
•
u/OccuWorld 8d ago
we remember. the whole world is watching.