The sun had not yet risen on the early morning of Oct. 14,
but thousands of young people, along with older workers and union members, were
already packed into Liberty Plaza a few blocks from Wall Street. Using the “people’s
mic” to amplify his voice, the speaker asked the crowd, all standing alert, who
was ready to be arrested in defense of the park that had become the epicenter
of one of the most important movements in recent history. Thousands of hands
shot upwards; the crowd was not without fear, but was clearly willing to act
despite it. A few minutes later, a statement was read that the city’s
billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, had backed down from his promise to evict
the occupation. Victory.
That showdown—in which some of the country’s most powerful
ruling-class forces were defeated—says a lot about what has taken place in the
last month. In that time, the Occupy Wall Street protest that began with
scarcely any notice has reignited a movement of global significance. Hundreds
of occupations now exist across the country, and the numbers of people
participating on Wall Street has swelled many times over.
How did this happen? Who could have predicted just a month
ago that on Oct. 15, over 1,500 cities would witness protests and rallies in
the name of the “99 percent” against the economic dictatorship of the very
rich?
Looking backward, this movement seems inevitable. It is
clearly the product of decades of stagnant wages, the elimination of union
jobs, mounting debt and obscene inequality. It is a product of the bailouts,
the shameless executive bonuses, the continued foreclosures and the deepening
job crisis. It is a product of the Obama administration’s failure to deliver
the change that it promised. More broadly, it is a product of the steady
erosion of the “American dream” of a stable “middle class.” The system has not
lived up to its own mythology, and the Occupy movement is its price to pay.
But the sharpening contradictions of capitalism do not tell
the whole story. As the Oct. 14 dawn showdown with Bloomberg showed, something
has happened among the people as well. While the rulers, the 1 percent, have
responded with police repression and violence, the protesters have remained
steadfast, unintimidated. Each heavy-handed response, from the infamous
pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters to the deliberate trapping and mass
arrest of 700 marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge, has backfired. Without this
determination to keep going, to continuously return to the barricades, the
movement could have never captured the imagination of the country and the
world.
Each week, the movement has expanded. The anti-Wall Street
message has resonated with young people across the world who feel they have no
future under the current order. Many have found within themselves a willingness
to fight that they never before knew they possessed.
The message of the movement has also resonated with labor
unions, who are in desperate need of a strategy and perspective to revive and
popularize their struggle. Although still hampered by a number of political
limitations, they see in the Occupy movement a sign of hope. On Oct. 5, they
co-sponsored the largest demonstration yet in support of Occupy Wall Street.
The mass march, which was permitted, gave an opportunity for participation
among working-class people who are unable to spend the night outside “occupying.”
It further allowed participation among sectors of the population who cannot
risk arrest.
More and more student activists, organizing against tuition
hikes in the city’s public universities, have begun to link their work with
Occupy Wall Street. Young people from oppressed communities, their curiosity
piqued by the constant news coverage, have arrived in larger numbers as well.
This is why so many people united on Oct. 14, determined to
block Bloomberg’s eviction plan. They recognized the importance of this new
pole.
Similarly, the occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol last
winter was carried out primarily by young people and the unemployed from a
variety of political perspectives. While the unions had not initiated the
occupation, it became a pole of struggle that allowed them to continuously
march, rally and widen the fight to save their rights.
The Occupy movement is of course full of contradictions and
problems—that is by definition what a “mass” movement is. There are a whole set
of questions that loom—the role of the police, the notion of “leaderless”
movements and this movement’s relationship to specially oppressed sectors of
society.
But the struggle has started, and from it a new political
consciousness will arise. This is unscripted territory. Political consciousness
is shaped by the battle once joined. Revolution is a process. Liberal movements
become radical and then revolutionary as they are confronted with new
challenges, obstacles and needs.
Along the way, the movement has the potential to continue
widening—to become a spark for a revival of labor struggle, and to connect with
the oppressed communities that have long known what it means to be part of the
99 percent.
As the revolutionary saying goes, “There are decades where
nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” We are living in
such weeks, and it feels like just the beginning.
