Occupy Wall Street

by Editorial Team | Oct 28, 2011 in Chaos | Leave A Comment

The first moments you spend in the tent city of Occupy Wall Street at New York’s Zuccotti Park can be a bit of a shock. It’s total chaos. Or so it seems, as tourists and protesters squeeze past each other, trample over posters while the deafening drums on one side drown out slogans yelled on the other. More than once I almost fell into one of the densely arranged tents where weary 20-somethings try to find some privacy.

This impression only seems to confirm the complaint from both supporters and opponents: that OWS has not real goals and programs, is politically ineffective and will most likely disappear as quietly as it came.

But look again and you’ll find a lot of method in the madness. What seems like a hodge podge jumble of tarps and stained mats turns out to be as well organized as a beehive. There is the library, stacked with thousands of books; there is the press area, where a dozen OWS volunteers blog, tweet and talk to journalists; there is the kitchen and food stand, where volunteer chefs do their best with piles of donated food; there is a medical tent, a coaching area, where volunteer psychologists help the protesters to improve their skills as “agents of change”. There is even an ecumenical altar, arranged around a tree.

And when there is anything to announce, the protesters use the “human microphone”, an effective – and community-building – method to make themselves heard without speakers. One person shouts out the message, those around him repeat, and those further away repeat again: “We need” – “WE NEED”. “Help with” – “HELP WITH”. “Sanitation” – “SANITATION”. Yes, OWS has its own street cleaners and garbagemen.

The most obvious sign of what’s at work here is the “General Assembly”, the daily meeting where the occupiers discuss fair tax models as well as how to deal with the police. After each of the proposals the protesters respond with hand signs not unlike those of stock brokers to signal approval, rejection or hesitation.

Although being leaderless is one of Occupy’s core principles, many of these unusual techniques go back to anthropologist and David Graeber. For his work the self-described anarchist researched democratic processes in a remote village in Madagascar as well as in the anti-globalization movement of the last 15 years. His view: many of the customary methods of the American left actually help to affirm the status quo. For Graeber, adjusting a little bit here and there just doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, he proposes to “create a model of the society we want”, based on the kind of “true” democracy, that is being practiced each morning at the General Assembly, where no one is the boss and compromise and consensus are the goals.

The fact that this dizzyingly diverse crowd still gets along and is still able to organize its experimental republic might be a bigger statement than many think.

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