Though it had a greater impact in America than here and no matter the outcome, I personally see the Occupy Movement as a great success. It took more people along that road of making the private public, politicised lots of people and created new networks of communication. It also altered the way lots of people view this society that we live in, opening their eyes to the inequalities and injustices, none of that can be bad.
Looking Back on Occupy
1. Your assessment of the Occupy movement was very positive. What is the
overall perception you have of this movement today? What is left of Occupy?
There is not much left of the Occupy movement as such — almost all the
encampments were destroyed in November or December 2011 and virtually no new
ones have emerged. On the other hand, the movement was in no way “defeated.”
With few exceptions, the people arrested were quickly released and totally
exonerated. The elimination of the encampments simply had the effect of forcing the participants
onto other, more diverse terrains of struggle. Countless people all over the country continue to
meet regularly, to network with each other and
to carry out all sorts of actions — picketing banks, disrupting corporate board
meetings, blocking home foreclosures, protesting environmental policies
(Monsanto, Tar Sands Pipeline, fracking, etc.), in addition to more specifically “occupy”
type actions such as attempting to take over and reopen schools and libraries
that have been closed and abandoned, or “Homes Not Jails” attempted takeovers of vacant
housing to provide dwellings for homeless people. One of the most interesting
and well planned of these latter types of actions, “Occupy the Farm,” took
place just a few blocks from my home last April, when ecological activists took over a
large plot of vacant urban land and turned it into a community garden, planting
more than ten thousand seedlings in the space of a few days. The
gardener-occupiers were driven out after three weeks, but the agitation
continues and
has resulted in a temporary victory against a planned commercial development. [
November
note: Since the completion of this interview the immense disaster relief work of
Occupy Sandy is yet another
very important and exemplary development.]
The Occupy movement already had the implicit
goal of “reclaiming the commons” — occupying
public squares or parks played on this theme, since regardless of
quibbles about
permits it was obvious that such spaces belong to the public and are, or
at least originally were, intended for public use. But
these more recent actions
have the merit of challenging the fetish of private property in a more
direct
manner. That fetish has always been extremely strong in the United
States, and the police responses to its transgression have always been
more
immediate and brutal. But I like to hope that these types of actions
will eventually
weaken the fetish, just as happened in the days of the Civil Rights
movement.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when black people
first started restaurant sit-ins, one often heard this argument: “That
restaurant belongs to the owner,
he
has the right to do
whatever he wants with it, including deciding who he wants to serve.”
But as more and more people kept
peacefully sitting in and calmly accepting arrest, the general public
was
gradually brought around to the idea that there was a “higher law”
than property rights — that other rights also had to be respected, such
as the right to be treated
fairly as a human being. I think this
may eventually happen with these post-Occupy invasions of various types
of property, as people see the
absurdity of there being millions of vacant buildings while there are
millions of people living in the streets. Even now many people
sympathize with
the idea of defending a family against foreclosure, despite the fact
that a bank
technically owns the home, because there is increasing awareness that
the banks
have often acted illegally. The notion of reopening abandoned schools,
etc., is
even more exemplary in that it hints at the notion of a society based on
cooperation and generosity rather than on how much money can be made
from
something.
The two drawbacks of these types of action are
that they are risky and that they thus tend to be the work of a small minority
(mostly young and mostly male).
Occupying public spaces is much more likely to attract the sympathy, the support,
and ultimately the participation of multitudes of ordinary people (including
parents, children, elderly, disabled). But for those who want to push
the limits and don’t mind the risks, taking over vacant buildings and opening
them up to public uses is much more challenging and inspiring than breaking
windows.
ann arky's home.
