The following was published in Liberation newspaper just before the unanticipated late night raid on Occupy Wall Street.
Facing foreclosure and in desperate need of help, Monique White turned to Occupy Minnesota, which had declared its opposition to the big banks. “I went down [to the General Assembly] and basically told my story,” White explained, “and they were willing to … help me in every way possible to keep my home.” Since then, the occupiers have been staying on the property to physically block her eviction. “If they want to take Monique out of her home, they’ll have to take me with her,” occupier Nick Espinosa told a local paper.
The Occupy movement has now experimented with a variety of tactics beyond the encampment of public plazas—the physical occupations of homes at risk of eviction and foreclosure, a general strike, support for picketing workers, student walk-outs and marches against police brutality. Taken together, these point the way towards a strategic vision for the movement to clarify its aims, widen its base of support, and build leadership among students, workers and communities hardest hit by the capitalist economic crisis.
The home occupation in Minnesota is far from the only example of such action. OccupyMN had already succeeded in delaying another family’s foreclosure. In October, a group of activists stimulated by Occupy Wall Street shut down an auction on foreclosed homes in Brooklyn, allowing an elderly African American woman to remain in the house she has lived in for decades. In Harlem, a group of activists is “occupying the boiler room” of a low-income building until the heat is fixed. Occupy Oakland recently passed a resolution to support the occupation of foreclosed and abandoned properties.
These occupations throw into sharp relief the contradictions of capitalism, in which millions of people go without shelter while millions of homes sit empty. They directly challenge the rights of private property—and thus could potentially draw an even sharper response from the authorities than the park occupations. But it also could quickly become an unstoppable trend that brings the Occupy movement into every town and city across the country.
That’s not all. Occupy Oakland’s general strike call succeeded in closing one of the country’s busiest ports, issuing a profound reminder to the ruling class that the people have the power to shut it all down. It also sent a powerful message to occupations everywhere that the power of the 99% is in our numbers, and specifically in the organized working class. As with the largely student occupation of the Wisconsin capitol in February, the Occupy movement is starting to embolden labor unions and inspire their rank-and-file.
The 25,000 who marched in Oakland did so at a critical moment when the rulers nationwide were taking the offensive against the Occupy movement. This has been the pattern over and over—each time the movement appears to be on the defensive or at risk, mass demonstrations of strength have kept the local authorities at bay. The Nov. 17 Day of Action will undoubtedly reinforce this message, and with the police again cracking down in city after city, it comes not a moment too soon.
While more and more editorial boards of the corporate media are calling for the authorities to forcibly evict the Occupy movement, others have been forecasting that the occupations cannot withstand the winter. They are wrong.
They are wrong not just because they underestimate the resolve of the occupiers. (Occupy Wall Street remained, for instance, despite the mayor’s confiscation of their heat generators.) They are wrong also because they reduce the movement to a single tactic—the occupation of public squares. Indeed, while the poor weather poses a challenge to this tactic, it also presents an opportunity for the Occupy movement to take bold initiatives this winter, so that it can expand and grow stronger.
