The Paper of Record has spoken: We didn’t think much of Occupy before, and now what we think is that it’s over.
The day before Occupy activists were gathering to mark the movement’s one-year anniversary, Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote (9/16/12): “For all intents and purposes, the Occupy movement is dead.”
Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Nocera explains, there was complacency.
It was easy to believe that housing prices could only go up and that we could always rely on debt to maintain our standard of living. We shrugged as manufacturing jobs disappeared—5.8 million just since 2000—and good middle-class jobs became harder to find. We didn’t talk much about income inequality. Nor did we care much that Wall Street had developed a mercenary trading culture, which had little to do with providing capital for companies, ostensibly its reason for being.
Hey—who’s this “we” anyway? The idea that “we” didn’t care about inequality and Wall Street greed might surprise the non–New York Times columnists who did, in fact, talk about these things.
Nocera contrasts Occupy with the Tea Party, which he credits for being willing to work within the political system: “87 new Tea Party-elected candidates showed up in Washington.” But it’s a strange comparison to make. That version of the “Tea Party” is re-branded Republicanism, politicians who sought to ride along with what the base of the party was calling itself. Nocera is correct that Occupy didn’t go that route—but that’s because it didn’t see how a Democratic Party too beholden to big money could speak to the issues it cares about.
Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin (9/18/12) waited until after the protests to declare Occupy irrelevant. Under the headline “Occupy Wall Street: A Frenzy That Fizzled,” Ross Ross Sorkin leads off: “It will be an asterisk in the history books, if it gets a mention at all.”
Ross Sorkin adds:
But now, 12 months later, it can and should be said that Occupy Wall Street was—perhaps this is going to sound indelicate—a fad.
For the sake of the history books, let’s remember why Ross Sorkin visited Occupy Wall Street almost a year ago:
I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week….
That’s how things work for star reporters on Wall Street—you check out a story when a banker is worried about what it might mean. (Some of Ross Sorkin’s colleagues, by the way, fret that he’s too close to his CEO sources.)
In any even, he’s fairly sure that Occupy has had no effect on those folks:
Have any new regulations for banks or businesses been enacted as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No. Has there been any new meaningful push to put Wall Street executives behind bars as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No.
This is, in its own way, true. But it’s more an indictment of the political system Occupy is protesting than an indictment of the movement itself. And even the most successful political movements tend not to change the world in just one year.
Ross Sorkin also writes:
In the fall of 2011, questioning anything about the movement was not too popular. Doing so was an invitation for withering ridicule.
Ah, yes…. Only the brave few—himself included—were willing to criticize Occupy early on.
That’s, of course, not true. The corporate media’s initial response to Occupy was to ignore the protests. When that proved untenable, plenty of pundits lined up to ridicule and smear the activists. And, yes, some of those media voices were ridiculed—like CNN host Erin Burnett—because they didn’t know what they were talking about. Ross Sorkin comes off sounding a bit like former Times public editor Arthur Brisbane, who thought the Times “overloved” Occupy.
That idea is silly. And seeing the eagerness with which those outlets have written Occupy’s obituary makes it perfectly clear that corporate media don’t, in fact, love Occupy too much.
For a sense of what actually happened on Occupy’s anniversary—including the harsh police tactics many protesters encountered in New York City—read Bhaskar Sunkara’s piece at In These Times.
You have to be joking. Even by your low standards for what constitutes fairness or accuracy, this doesn’t register. It was a one-year anniversary event so insignificant in numbers and message that it would not normally even register. Then again, any hint of an opinion — remember that Sorkin DealBook is a column!?!?! — that fails to fit squarely with Peter Hart’s has him licking his chops, right?
Of course, this isn’t really about “Occupy” – whatever it is, and it is many things, and as uneven as the Oakland hills.
(Which means there are hilltops as well as lowlands, and we’d do well to eschew ignoring either.)
No … it’s about squelching hope.
It’s about telling us that pulling a lever or filling in a circle every so often is how we should address the destruction of our and our fellow human beings’ lives.
It’s about keeping us inside the fences, and outside the gates.
It’s about kettling our humanity.
It’s their raison d’etre.
And it’s our charge to be unreasonably enraged by it.
And to do something about it.
…The outlook of those involved in organizing the Occupy protests lent itself quite easily to being appropriated for this purpose. The slogans of “no politics” and “no leadership,” repeated endlessly by those dominating the Occupy groups, were in fact entirely compatible with the establishment politics of the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatus. What they really meant was no independent politics, and no independent leadership.
The social and political outlook of those at the core of the protests quickly emerged. Whatever radical phraseology was employed, ultimately what was driving the protests was dissatisfaction with the distribution of wealth at the top of society, not any struggle for the radical reorganization of economic life as a whole. The slogan of the “99 percent” pointed to this fact, as it obscured the deep divide between the vast majority of the population, the working class, and the more privileged sections of the upper middle class—the top 10 percent or top 5 percent.
Pervading the politics of the Occupy organizers is a deep hostility to the working class, which they blame for its own oppression. The one thing they are sure they don’t want to see is an independent political movement of the working class.
The experience contains important lessons. Many who were initially attracted to the Occupy protests because they were looking for a way to fight against inequality and the domination of the corporate and financial elite failed to find it. They are now confronted with the fact that a real oppositional movement must be developed on an entirely different basis—through the independent political mobilization of the working class against the capitalist system…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/pers-m03.shtml
The latest innovation of capital to counter the organization of the working class is to eliminate it. That which does not exist cannot resist. Try working under predatory finance capitalists while competing with computerized machines and foreign slave labor for your job; not only are the workers squeezed but so is productive capital. The Big Three auto manufacturers make most of their profit from finance; manufacturing has become a loss leader. Working class people may not be able to easily see this, but the interest payments and economic rent sucked out of productive enterprises by the FIRE sector predators of the 1% are destroying both the boss you negotiate with for your pay and the productive enterprise that employs both you and your boss.
The working class’s opportunity to change the world, when large numbers of workers were forced to be in proximity to each other in the productive enterprises, has passed with the decline of working class employment in domestic manufacturing. If you want to join that fight, go to Columbia where that fight continues and union leaders are frequently killed.
Assigning the responsibility—and the blame for failure— on working people is a pretty big load for them to carry in addition to doing mind-numbing, back-breaking labor.
When you look at a movement and declare it dead, you best remember that movements are not organizations.
Occupy was a tactic, it wasn’t even a movement initially, and it has never been an organization. It spread like wildfire around the world because of activist livestream TV independent of the mainstream media. Global Revolution, the original livestream channel from Zuccotti park, served 3 million live video streams in the first month of Occupy. We didn’t need the New York Times’ help to get the word out.
The global movement that resulted from the NYC model was comprised of a mixture of old school activists and total noobs, and served as a massive international training arena for direct action and political organizing.
Deeply involved in two of the Occupy encampments—New York and Pittsburgh—I can’t help but smile when people declare it dead. The connections between people who didn’t know each other before OWS still exist. The great number of spin-off projects and activist clusters that have thrived in the aftermath of the evictions of the parks are not going to vanish in this lifetime.
People who watched Occupy from the outside have no clue of what happened inside, and thus can make ridiculous pronouncements like a blindfolded man who declares that an elephant’s trunk is, in fact, a snake. Myopia is apparently an editorial value at the NYT.
After all the energy of the high-maintenance Occupy public space movement, and the national convergence at the first subsequent National Special Security Event after Occupy (the NATO summit in Chicago), a low turn out of protesters at both the the DNC and RNCs shows how much Occupy borrowed from the existing activist community.
For many of us old school activists, it was a retraining and a hands-on reminder of how we build movements in the streets.
It was also a vision of a coming future scenario when things are much tougher, when people are more desperate, and when CEOs and clueless old media dinosaurs like Joe Nocera and Andrew Ross Sorkin will have a lot more to worry about than some perceived rabble.
How they don’t grasp that we just witnessed the first semester of a powerful, earth-changing, international activist university is beyond me. There are tens of thousands of new activists-for-life that were born out of the Occupy movement. To declare the movement dead based on an anniversary protest simply shows that these people don’t know much about Occupy, which is kind of embarrassing if you’re writing about it in the self-important New York Times.
To dumb it down for the paper of record: We’re still here, we’re still pissed off, but now we’re trained. As Anonymous would say: Expect us.
Here’s a response I wrote to the Sorkin / Occupy Wall Street essay: http://www.occupywithart.com/blog/2012/9/20/another-dose-of-withering-ridicule-for-andrew-sorkin.html
With regards both Nocera and Sorkin on the effectiveness of OWS as a movement (not an organization):
“But, with regards Occupy’s impact on the national political scene, all concerns about Sorkin’s soul aside… Ask yourself one question: Would Mitt Romney, the ALEC, US Chamber of Commerce, AEI, Koch brother candidate of choice, be on the skids in this election season, if it weren’t for OWS? Would Andrew Sorkin and Joe Nocera [or any other pundit] be questioning Romney’s serial tax evasion, or his history as on-again/off-again Bain CEO, or his disdain for 47% of Americans? The true answer is NO. Go Occupy! Happy birthday!”
If corporate media focused on the financial sector were functioning today as anything like a democracy-serving free press, the LIBOR fraud story would be front-and-center in the business section of every major newspaper (for example). Instead, pundits and talking heads “shoot the messenger.” Wall Street is a systemically corrupt and corrupting force in American society today. Would either Nocera or Sorkin admit it in print? They seem to be operating primarily as enablers, by situating that corruption in an array of false equations. OWS is not the Tea Party, the first “movement” created by a television channel (Fox) and astroturf organizations funded by the Koch brothers, ALEC & US Chamber of Commerce corporate syndicates, etc. Lehman? OMG, Joe. Anyway, these columns will do nothing to stop Occupy, because the causes that OWS is a response to have only gotten worse, not better. The 1% are spending billions to ensure that trend continues, to their benefit. Nocera and Sorkin are their ersatz (and/or actual) employees.
Some I’ve talked to in the OWS movement have shown interest in joining the grass roots movement for a National Hiring Day. If this catches on with the majority of the protestors they will have shifted the media from covering police skirmishes, to covering corporate responsibility and jobs. Then the question becomes not is the NYT covering OWS, but it is this: Is the NYT hiring on National Hiring Day and giving back to their country for all that corporation has been given.
A National Hiring Day would switch the media including NYT from OWS skirmishes to jobs and corporate responsibility – including their own.
National Hiring Day – This is a day that corporations are encouraged to hire new employees. Corporations are called on to put patriotism first and help their country in
hard times. Those corporations that cannot hire, are asked to stop firing for that month.
Current TV’s Cenk Uygur interviews Occupy founder/stalwart David Degraw re what Occupy was about, what it accomplished, and where it is headed.
*‘Another World Is Happening’ – Occupy Wall Street Anniversary Interview 9/18/12
http://ampedstatus.org/another-world-is-happening-occupy-wall-street-anniversary-interview/
To me, this cartoon symbolizes what is/was wrong with “occupy”:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/20/1134270/-Not-in-the-race
So does the Times believe that Americans dont care about income inequality all of a sudden? The record poverty in NY should give Nocera a reality check, but he wouldn’t dare acknowledge that people are unemployed, homeless and desperate.
You better hope that reports of “OWS”‘s demise are greatly exaggerated.
No analyst of credibility on Wall St or elsewhere sees any way out of the “ponzi” like economic policies of the current period and when the collapse accelerates we will wish OWS was alive and well.
[Note to security state: these statements in no way represent an opinion or intention of any kind and are only reflexions on speculations about one possible reality that may or may not exist in the future or the past as of retrieval of this media from the NSA database, in and out of current time and space. Have a good day.]
Robert, it was hardly ‘insignificant” . It’s just that the the corporate media is ignoring it for their own self-serving excuses. I wrote a letter to NYT in response to Sorkin’s column(which seems at this point unlikely to be printed) THe movemnet is only a year old and Sorkin expected it (sarcastically) to have brought about economic equality and justice as well has bringing the banks to accountability. The Civil Rights and Labor movts shows that democracy is often a long, slow process.Sorkin knows damn well that the disappearance of the tents does not trnslate into the end of the movement. He’s simply afraid of it.
Occupy has been very busy but rarely covered in the general new wheel. Only in selected news sources. Not being reported doesn’t mean they aren’t working and having an impact. Out of sight may be out of mind but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there and not being effective. It is obvious to me that those saying OWS is “dying” or “dead” simply want it to be.
The only person at the Times that I’m aware of who said anything positive about Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement in general was Paul Krugman. Everyone else ridiculed or dumped on them. Even the Daily Show poked fun at them.
The Occupy movement can in no way be compared with the Tea Party. Occupy obviously never had the support of the Democratic Party, but the Tea Party was clearly an AstroTurf group started by a Wall Streeter’s rant about “loser’s” mortgages, and it was organized primarily by Dick Armey (FreedomWorks) with support by many right wing organizations like David Koch through his political arm, Americans for Prosperity.
I don’t believe OWS is dead at all. It was an event that captured people’s minds by saying..WOW, I’m not the only one that thinks this is necessary! All ages and occupations and educational levels, religions and life experiences came together and said “SOMETHING IS ROTTEN in the state of Wall St. and beyond….. : )
I think many of us know that is still true, and we’re still working on changes, but we also learned that many things seem to be rotten in the state of lots of things. That concept of standing up and being a part of a real feeling was what got people excited and still keeps them going. How do we fix things was the question and all kinds of ideas and plans came into being.
It didn’t matter where you lived in the world because the IDEA became part of the oxygen circling the world! It really was a people quake FOR the planet! Energy become mass and mass became energy. : )
Wonderful groups came about like those who refuse to let banks throw people out of their homes. people working for homeless and food groups uncorrupted by Chemical AG. Dropping out of banks and refusing to by from some corporations! People started community gardens, started libraries and cooperating in all kinds of endeavors, so that people either remembered what a community once was, or experienced it for the first time. People like that feeling, because it’s a part of being ALIVE!
So, NYT, “energy can neither be created nor destroyed..” It’s THERE, and it’s not going away any time soon, but maybe your readership will be : )
Sorry, I apologize; I was so excited that I made lots of spelling errors. : (
Oh and NYT, if a gathering is the pronouncement for all future events, then I guess re: the republican convention, we learned that Honey Boo Boo should replace MR. ROMNEY. : )
Rejecting electoral politics is great, but there has to be some alternative form of organization on offer instead. There is one: sortition.
FAIR needs to open up to criticism of its own Positivist fantasies.
Occupy is indeed dead, and it is a fair point to contrast its complete dearth of political candidates with the idiot parade of Tea Party goons getting into elected positions.
Occupy has kept the left’s delusions of social power alive with collegiate dreams of overcoming corporate power, allowing the police to rack up big overtime, the courts to continue humming with fines and citations, and the superystem to function as normal.
FAIR is a part of this charade, because it traffics in foolish visions of counter-power, refusing to see how corrupt, immovable, and lunatic institutions are woven into social reality.
Let Peter Hart go donw to the clown show and bang a drum and mic check some slam poet’s self-love and get back to us whether he felt Goldman Sacks shake.
Silly comparing the tea party to occupy.The tea party was a one trick pony(Im a member).A come back to jesus organization.We saw the constitution had become an out dated ignored rag,and was being trampled.So we rose up to reinstate it and vote out those who we felt were at war with it.
Occupy was a lot of things to a lot of different factions.Only one thing they had in common with one another…..They were pissed off about something.Or anything.Or everything.Sometimes their anger was justified ,and sometimes it was just so much nonsense.And the message did get lost.They became a pain in the ass(I was in New York then).There were some there who were really articulate, and had core belief’s about why they were there.Then there was the rest.A Grateful Dead carnival atmosphere took over.It was dirty and gritty……..and the music sucked :)Seriously the idea seemed to be among the rank and file there to “eat the rich”.It just drew idiots like moths to a flame.How it will be seen by history?Well if we keep spending borrowing and printing there wont be a history.We have to recreate wealth if we have any chance of surviving.If we do, and we survive(doubtful) they will be looked on as malcontents.If we collapse within the next 12 years(probable),they will be seen as the first of the mobs carrying torches and pitchforks across the land.As we eat our rich.Our poor,and everyone in between.
LOL michael e.:
What a funny thought, “The Grateful Dead.” What a great theme movement for October and Halloween!
Wall St. can be occupied with ZOMBIES! How fun. I wonder if people will be able to tell them apart from the Streeters? : )
What? “We have to recreate wealth to survive?” What about community? I think that’s the only thing that will help all people survive the coming weather changes. Besides, money is whatever people want it to be, because if enough people don’t have any to buy survival goods, then they will find something other than what we have now. What we have now for money are just blips on a computer screen and if the power goes out, we’ve got nothing!
The Constitution..”…an outdated and ignored rag..????” What, how can you say that? I know that Justice Scalia thinks that the only way to understand the Constitution is to be an 18th century Federalist. But really, if he followed that idea to its source, then he couldn’t be a lawyer, or a justice, because Italians were treated awfully when they immigrated to this country.
All kinds of people would have to leave Congress now, if we were to go backwards because, you know, they weren’t considered to be the” right people” either. : )
Really, michael e. , aren’t you glad that the Constitution is more enlightened than many of the political parties? As to OWS, I think of it as enlightened as some of the original founders in terms of what America could be. : )
The OWS spark showed the ruling elite (and the rest of us) that there are far too many people that are unhappy with the status quo. It also showed them (and us) that the proles are not quite unhappy enough because they could be dispersed and scared with a little bit of violence. When there are enough people in enough poverty and stress, millions will be pouring into the streets and no number of cops and high-tech gear will scare them. We saw this with the Arab Spring. Those pampered white American kids who were angry about high tuitions and student debt have not had enough pain and were scared with so little compared to what the Arab Spring stood up to.
Gloriana when you say community you are correct.Such an important concept.But what in Gods name makes you ever think rich people are not involved in community?community is a personal choice.Not one built by government.Case in point…..Obama strives to control community for communities sake.Yet he himself personally has given next to nothing in all his years to charity.Joe Biden even less.Mitt has given mountains of money since he left school.Ryan likewise.do you not see the hypocrisy?One lives it.One side uses it to gain power.The recreation of wealth means the ability of everyone to enter into(or start) a profession, and achieve his dreams without the immediate sucking sound of the governments money vacuum taking the juice out of the other end.It then leads to the simple math equation of who is a better steward of the money created.Government or the private sector.On every level that answer is not government.Government who has run us into a 17 trillion dollar debt no longer wins that vote.our constitution new this to its very core.It was right then….it is right now.Governments power was limited.It has exploded every day to our detriment.As far as OWS -enlightened?????In what sense?Unhappy yes.But how so enlightened?When I was there i could never find two people who were in agreement as to why they were there.
Considering how the rich tend to stay within their group they become insulated and so they really don’t understand what their policies are doing to people. Michael-e can you explain why Romney thinks the Middle Class starts with $250,000? That starts you in the top 10%. The Middle Class is generally $40,000-$60,000. Or why former Pres. George Herbert Walker Bush was unaware of what red LASER scanners were?
The so-called Tea Party were just a concentrated mostly white, male, upper class Republican. It was never a “party” beyond its name. Unlike the OWS who were made up of people from all walks of life even a few 1%ers! Not the same at all.
So the rich tend to stay within their group do they?Again where do you get this crap?So now movie stars ,and Rock stars,and business men who have become wealthy only hang with other wealthy people?Guess that cuts out most of their own families ,and childhood friends since the average “wealthy” person today did not come from that stationMoney opens doors without a doubt to meet more people than you otherwise would.But it closes no doors.I do wonder why Obamas brother still lives in a hut though.And had to ask a conservative talk show host for 2 grand for an operation.As Obama did a speech last week telling us we must care for our brothers and sisters.So i guess some people do forget when they get rich and powerful.
Why does the middle class “END”(you said begin) at 250 K as mitt stated?Ask Obama.He says the rich BEGIN at 250K.Same thing stated another way.Mitt said nothing that is not excepted by both sides.Lot of crap about nothing.
The red scanners that Bush did not know how to operate?Ever try them at a LOWS?They never work.And why does it surprise you that a man who was governor for so long and president for 8 years is out of the loop of how things work?Didn’t Obama just say on some interview that by the time he leaves office he wont know how to drive its been so long?
So the tea party is all white upper class bla bla bla.Listen the tea party is simply a movement to put the constitution back to its rightful place.Any white,black,yellow green,red or polka dot man that is not a member should be asked why not.Any American not a member should be asked why not.Instead you blame those who show up(whatever their color) and try to paints them as racists.Lets do a test.A racist test.How many white,male upper class men are tea party members?Since the membership is impressive but not huge in the traditional polling sense Id say it is low.How many vote for tea party affiliated candidates.Since half the country is Dem….Again I would wager 30% max.Now how many Blacks will vote for Obama(en total)?I have seen numbers as high as 100% in the NBC poll.I think it is 97%.No no racism there.(Shit you could not get 97% of catholics to vote for Jesus Christ himself.)Really night gaunt stop with the politics of separation.You don’t have a leg to stand on.The left is so full of hypocrite’s I could make a livelihood of pointing it out.Wait a minute.Rush already does.And Hannity ,and Beck,and Bill O and all the rest of em.
By the way …..Years ago when I worked for Clinton an old timer who went back to Eisenhower years told me an interesting thing.He said you can tell who is the lying party by how many people become successful pointing our their lies and hypocrisy.I know what he meant now all these years later.The right has a veritable lock hold on that.Tons of shows.The left limps along weakly
You’re right on all counts gloriana. That m.e. is one staggeringly naive dude, aint he? More gibberish, with some wild, wildly implausible stuff thrown in for good measure. I like how he supplies his own unintended punchlines: (“So the rich tend to stay within their group do they?Again where do you get this crap?So now movie stars ,and Rock stars,and business men who have become wealthy only hang with other wealthy people?Guess that cuts out most of their own families ,and childhood friends since the average “wealthy” person today did not come from that station” (sic)). I’ve gotta go now: Brad Pitt and I are having a beer at the local tap with Mitt Romney’s campaign manager and Warren Buffet. These good friends of mine all understand that hangin’ with the riff-raff (that’s me!) is empowering in our classless society.
@Martin: What’s a Positivist fantasy? Seriously. I didn’t get it from the context of your harangue. Is “Positivism” some kind of state of being? Is it a function of the dialectic?
Tim Im sorry you don’t see people who have made a lot of money or achieved some measure of fame as just the same as you.Im not sure where that comes from, but you have said it before to me on this sight.Tim go to the top.Obama.Is he really so different from you?Does he put his pants on so differently?Would you get a “chill up your leg”if you met him?You are probably just as qualified as he was going in for the job.So i would not be so impressed.I do a lot of charity functions in LA.Elizabeth Glazier ped aids brings in hundreds of celebs,and yes I have met Brad Pitt.Nice guy.Reminds me of my friend Robert who i grew up with.He didn’t glow.Or have wings.Just a regular guy.Like you and me.I would get past calling yourself riff raff.Im sure if you shook Mitts hand, you would see both of you are just flesh and blood.
Did you catch the Iranian leaders speech to the UN?God he sounds like you guys on this sight.Did you write the speech?
Fatal drug overdoses. Rapes. Vandalism. Burglaries of area businesses. That is the legacy of the Occupy movement. Good-bye and good riddance.