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Title: Occupy Author: CrimethInc. Date: April 14, 2016 Language: en Topics: Occupy, democracy, autonomy Source: https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/14/occupy-democracy-versus-autonomy
The story goes that the very first gathering of Occupy Wall Street began
as an old-fashioned top-down rally with speakers droning on—until a
Greek student (and perhaps—an anarchist?) interrupted it and demanded
that they hold a proper horizontal assembly instead. She and some of the
youngsters in attendance sat down in a circle on the other side of the
plaza and began holding a meeting using consensus process. One by one,
people trickled over from the audience that had been listening to
speakers and joined the circle. It was August 2, 2011.
Here, in the origin myth of the Occupy Movement, we encounter a
fundamental ambiguity in its relationship to organization. We can
understand this shift to consensus process as the adoption of a more
inclusive and therefore more legitimate democratic model, anticipating
later claims that the general assemblies of Occupy represented real
democracy in action. Or we can focus on the decision to withdraw from
the initial rally, seeing it as a gesture in favor of voluntary
association. Over the following year, this internal tension erupted
repeatedly, pitting democrats determined to demonstrate a new form of
governance against anarchists intent upon asserting the primacy of
autonomy.
Though David Graeber encouraged participants to regard consensus as a
set of principles rather than rules, both proponents and authoritarian
opponents of consensus process persisted in treating it as a formal
means of government—while anarchists who shared Graeber’s framework
found themselves outside the consensus reality of their fellow
Occupiers. The movement’s failure to reach consensus about the meaning
of consensus itself culminated with ugly attacks in which Rebecca Solnit
and Chris Hedges attempted to brand anarchist participants as violent
thugs.
How did that play out in the hinterlands, where small-town Occupy groups
took up the decision-making practices of Occupy Wall Street? The
following narrative traces the tensions between democratic and
autonomous organizational forms throughout the trajectory of one local
occupation.
A decade and a half ago, I participated in the so-called
“anti-globalization movement,” so described by journalists who preferred
not to say “anticapitalist.” Beginning with a groundswell of local
initiatives, it culminated in a string of massive riots at international
trade summits from Seattle in November 1999 to Genoa in July 2001.
Although I had been an anarchist for some years already, I learned about
consensus process in the course of those experiences. Like many other
participants, I believed that this form of decision-making pointed the
way to a world without government or capitalism. We cherished the
seemingly impossible dream that one day that decision-making process
might be taken up by the population at large.
Ten years later, I visited the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti
Park. It had only existed for two weeks, yet it had already developed
its political culture: daily assemblies, “mic check,” consensus process.
This was all familiar to me from my “anti-globalization” days, though
most people there clearly did not share that background.
I heard a lot of legalistic and reformist rhetoric in the course of my
brief visit. At the same time, this was what we had dreamed of, our
practices spreading outside our milieu. Could the practices themselves
instill the political values that had originally inspired us to employ
them? Some of my comrades had argued that directly democratic models
could be a radicalizing step towards anarchism. The following months put
that theory to the test.
Two weeks after my visit to Manhattan, I was back in my hometown in
Middle America, attending our Occupy group’s second assembly. A hundred
people from a wide range of backgrounds and political perspectives were
debating whether to establish an encampment. It’s not easy for a crowd
arbitrarily convened through an open invitation on Facebook to make a
decision together. Some argued against occupying, claiming that the
police would evict us, insisting we should apply for a permit first. In
the nearest city, occupiers had applied for a permit but were only
granted one lasting a few hours; everyone who remained after it expired
was arrested. A few of us thought it better to go forward without
permission than to embolden the authorities to believe we would comply
with whatever was convenient for them.
A different facilitator would have let the debate remain abstract
indefinitely, effectively quashing the possibility of an occupation in
the name of consensus. But ours cut right to the chase: “Raise your hand
if you want to camp out here tonight.” A few hands went hesitantly up.
“Looks like five… six, seven… OK, let’s split into two groups: those who
want to occupy, and everyone else. We’ll reconvene in ten minutes.”
At first there were only a half dozen of us meeting on the occupiers’
side of the plaza, but after we took the first step, others drifted
over. Ten minutes later, there were twenty-four of us—and that night
dozens of people camped out in the Plaza. I stayed up all night waiting
for the police to raid us, but they never showed up. We’d won the first
round, expanding what everyone imagined to be possible—and we owed it to
people taking the initiative autonomously, not to reaching consensus.
Our occupation was a success. Over the first few weeks, scores of new
people met and got to know each other through demonstrations, logistical
work, and nights of impassioned discussion.
The nightly assemblies served as a space to get to know each other
politically. First, we heard a wide range of testimonials about why
people were there. These ranged from boring to fascinating, but they
died out swiftly once the business of making decisions via assemblies
got underway. Next, we weathered lengthy debates about whether there
should be a nonviolence policy, with nonviolence serving as a code word
for legalistic obedience. Thanks to the participation of many
anarchists, this discussion was split pretty much down the middle, but
it enabled many occupiers who had never been part of something
comparable to hear some new arguments.
It was interesting to watch so many people go through such a rapid
political evolution. I enjoyed the debates, the drama of watching
middle-class liberals struggle to converse on an equal footing with
anarchists and other angry poor people.
On the other hand, the assemblies were ineffective as a way to make
decisions. After weeks of grueling daily sessions, we gave up entirely
on formulating a mission statement about our basic goals, consensus
having been repeatedly blocked by a lone contrarian. Some people managed
to push a couple small demonstrations through the consensus process, but
they attracted almost no participants. The assembly’s stamp of approval
did not correlate with people actually investing themselves; the
momentum to make an effort succeed was determined elsewhere.
While the nightly assemblies helped us get to know each other
politically, if you wanted to get to know people personally, you had to
spend time at the encampment. Standing night watch, facing off with
drunk college students and other reactionaries, I became acquainted with
many of the occupiers who had first arrived as disconnected individuals.
It was those connections that gave us cause to be invested in each
other’s efforts over the following months.
Unexpectedly, the liberals were among the most invested in the protocol
of consensus process—however unfamiliar it was, they found it reassuring
that there was a proper way of doing things. This emphasis on protocol
created rifts with the actual inhabitants of the encampment, many of
whom felt ill at ease communicating in such a formal structure; that
class divide proved to be a more fundamental conflict than any political
disagreement. From the perspective of the liberals, there was a
democratic assembly in which anyone could participate, and those who did
not attend or speak up could not complain about the decisions made
there. From the vantage point of the camp, the liberals showed up for an
hour or two every couple days, and expected to be able to dictate
decisions to people who were in the camp twenty-four hours a day—often
not even sticking around to implement them.
As a part of the minority that was familiar with consensus process yet
simultaneously a denizen of the camp proper, I could see both sides. I
tried to explain to the liberals who just showed up for the
assemblies—the ones who understood Occupy as a political project rather
than a social space—that there were already functioning decision-making
processes at work in the encampment, however informal, and if they
wanted to establish better relations with the residents of the
encampment, they should take those processes seriously and try to
participate in them, too.
After the first few weeks, the flow of new participants slowed. We
became a known quantity once more. Consequently, we began to lose our
leverage on the authorities. Meanwhile, it was getting colder out, and
winter was on the way. Based on our experience attempting to formulate a
mission statement or call for demonstrations, it seemed clear to us that
if there was to be a next step, it would have to be decided outside the
general assemblies.
I got together with some friends I had known and trusted for a long
time—the same group that had called for Occupy in our town in the first
place. We discussed whether to occupy a vast empty building a few blocks
from the plaza. Most of us thought it was impossible, but a few fanatics
insisted it could be done. We decided that if they could get us inside,
we would try to hold onto it. But the plan had to be a secret until we
were in, so the police couldn’t stop us.
The building occupation was a success. Over a hundred people flooded
into the building, setting up a kitchen, a reading library, and sleeping
quarters. A band performed, followed by a dance party. That night,
dozens of people slept in the building rather than at the plaza,
relieved to be out of the cold. Once again, I stood watch all night,
waiting for the police—the stakes were higher this time, but they didn’t
show up. Spirits were high: once again, we had expanded the space of
possibility.
The following afternoon, as we continued cleaning and repairing the
building, a rumor circulated that the police were preparing a raid.
Several dozen of us gathered for an impromptu meeting. It struck me how
different the atmosphere was from our usual general assemblies. There
were no bureaucratic formalities, no deadlocks over minutia. No one
droned on just to hear himself speak or stared off listlessly. There was
no payoff for grandstanding or chiding each other about protocol.
Here, there was nothing abstract about the issues at hand. We were
putting our bodies on the line just by being present; these were real
choices that would have immediate consequences for all of us. We didn’t
need a facilitator to listen to each other or stay on topic. With our
freedom at stake, we had every reason to work well together.
The day after the raid, a huge crowd gathered at the original encampment
for a contentious general assembly—the biggest and most energetic our
town witnessed throughout the entire sequence of Occupy. Our decision to
occupy the building, arrived at outside the general assembly, had
ironically made the general assembly irresistible to everyone. Some
people were inspired by the building occupation and our response to the
police raid; others, who assumed the general assembly to be the
governing body of the movement, were outraged that we had bypassed it;
still others, who had not been interested in Occupy until now, came to
engage with us because they could see we were capable of making a big
impact. Even if they were only there to argue that we should “be
peaceful” and obey the law, we hoped that entering that space of
dialogue might expand their sense of what was possible, too.
So the assembly benefitted from the building occupation, whether or not
people approved of it. But they only came because of the power we had
expressed by acting on our own. It was this power that they sought to
access through the assembly—some to increase it, some to command it,
some to tame it. In fact, the power didn’t reside in the assembly as a
decision-making space, but in the people who came to it and the
connections they forged there.
Over the following week, people inspired by the building occupations in
Oakland and our little town occupied buildings in St. Louis, Washington,
DC, and Seattle. This new wave of actions pushed the Occupy movement
from symbolic protests towards directly challenging the sanctity of
capitalist notions of property. Our town saw its biggest unpermitted
demonstrations in years.
Months later, I compared notes with comrades around the country about
how this mass experiment in consensus process had gone. Everywhere,
there had been the same conflicts, as some people who saw the assemblies
as the legitimate space of decision-making criticized those who
propelled the movement forward for acting autonomously. Even in Oakland,
the most confrontational encampment in the country, they never made a
consensus decision to keep police out of the camp—that decision was made
by individuals, independently. A friend from Oakland recounted to me
how, when he prevented an officer from entering, a young reformist who
had just learned the buzzwords of consensus process angrily shouted “I
block you, man! I block you!” at him. In a photograph taken after the
riots with which occupiers retaliated against the eviction of their
encampment, someone has written on a broken window, “This act of
vandalism was NOT authorized by the GA,” as if the GA were a
governmental body, answerable for its subjects and therefore entitled to
legitimize or delegitimize their actions.
That shows a profound misunderstanding of what consensus procedure is
good for. Like any tool, power flows from us to it, not the other way
around—we can invest it with power, but using it won’t necessarily make
us more powerful. Every single step that made Occupy succeed in our
town, from the call for the first assembly to the decision to occupy the
plaza to the decision to occupy a building, was the result of autonomous
initiative. We never could have consensed to do any of those things in
an assembly that included anarchists, Maoists, reactionary poor people,
middle-class liberals, police infiltrators, people with mental health
issues, aspiring politicians, and whoever else happened to stop by at
random. The assemblies were essential as a space where we could
intersect and exchange proposals, creating new affinities and building a
sense of our collective power, but we don’t need a more
participatory—and therefore even more inefficient and invasive—form of
government. We need the ability to act freely as we see fit, the common
sense to coexist with others wherever possible, and the courage to stand
up for ourselves whenever there are real conflicts.
As the movement was dying down, the faction of Occupy that was most
invested in legalism and protocol called for a National Gathering in
Philadelphia on July 4, 2012, at which to “collectively craft a Vision
of a Democratic Future.” Barely 500 people showed from around the
country, a tiny fraction of the number that had blocked ports, occupied
parks, and marched in the streets. The people, as they say, had voted
with their feet.