By: Patricia Wilkie

It is difficult to say exactly how Occupy Wall Street started as we are witnessing a web of global interconnectedness with social movements in the 21st century.  With rising global inequality, there are also protests globally. For example, thanks to the technological age, we were able to bear witness to what many went through in the Arab Spring: the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began in December of 2010.

The simplest answer as to how OWS came about was a call to action for “culture-jammers” by Adbusters.  This group laid the initial groundwork for the movement. Adbusters Media Foundation is a self professed “global network of activists, artists, writers, students, educators, and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age”. They circulated information about the OWS protest around the Internet.  It reached mostly young, political and tech savvy crowds.  On September 17th, 2011 people began to amass.  Thus OWS was built with little expectation of what it was to be, no real pre-meditated structure other than an encampment.   It was built from the ground-up, and the organization seemed to happen spontaneously with grace, coherence and egalitarianism. Currently, this movement has far surpassed any expectations the original protestors had, and moved into a different stratosphere of social movements.  It is a movement that is now replicated all over the country and has transcended into a global movement, as Europe, Latin America and even Australia are now active with Occupy Wall Street.

OWS springs from a feeling that the people in power, and the people who hold government positions will not implement democracy, thus the people must take it into their own hands.  There are a few things that make this movement entirely unique in comparison to other movements.  These aspects are possibly what has sustained the movement thus far, and allowed it to thrive, survive, challenge, and above all else, grow like hell.  The movement is in its infancy and if done correctly it will carry on and continue to be a game changer.

Structure and Sustainability. OWS is de-centralized in its power structure.  Decision-making is dispersed, making the governance and the democratic processes closer to the people.  This helps to ensure the movement will not be dismantled or co-opted.  OWS protests will be different from city to city due to people’s differing needs and wants in their specific communities.  Despite the regional differences, there is a common structure modeled off that of NYC’s, the movement’s place of origin.   The shared threads of this movement are that it is primarily a leaderless movement catalyzed by the grace of civil society and the hard work of the collective.  The protesters use a General Assembly as a form of protest and process in order to democratically decide what will go on.  No leaders were appointed; whether this happened organically or on purpose this form has two clear advantages.

The first being, ideologically it is more democratic.  The second being the powers that wish to disassemble and discredit the movement have not been able to do so, as they have not been able to investigate, pick off or corrupt any particular person.  Most movements of the 20th century had significant leaders, for example the civil rights movement had MLK Jr.  A leaderless movement raises more questions than just those of economic justice; it also challenges and confounds what we know about existing models of social movements.

Inclusivity is what is propelling and growing this movement.  There is power in numbers; only divided do we fall.  Many truths are heard, and all are welcome.  There are even political subgroups that come and organize within the context, but there has been no appropriation by these groups, only participation.  If the movement is to reach its potential, it must stay as inclusive as possible. Direct democracy seems to be the goal.  In the moment you are raising your voice among your community (global and local) and making your opinions, ideologies and political theories heard.  This is the kind of direct democracy that can never be handed down to us; no politician can ever do this for us.

OWS is widely a non-violent movement, calling on techniques that most famously were instituted in protest situations by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. in the face of antagonistic, aggravating and sometimes violent authority.  The protesters have learned from past movements that a very conscious effort to stay non-violent is necessary and that non-violent resistance is the only way to send a clear message to the public.   To quote Gandhi: “Peace is the most powerful weapon of mankind.  It takes more courage to take a blow than to give one.  It takes more courage to try and talk things through than to start a war”.  Also, “If you want to send a message, it must be a message of love.” Non-violence is one of the ways this movement will be sustained; if it were to turn violent or destructive the creditability of the movement would be shattered.

Where do we go from here? There are criticisms of the movement from many different pundits and people.   While they all aren’t completely without merit, it is also easier to stand on the sidelines and pass judgment.  Anyone who will deny or pretend to not understand why this movement is happening, simply cannot be looking at the world today.  Anyone who isn’t entirely insulted from such mundane realities as unemployment and underemployment, foreclosures, student debt and serious increase in poverty (and that is just the beginning), may be too invested in this rigged game to reconcile.  It is a question of distribution of wealth and resources, not a matter of poverty in our country.  There is certain impunity of the people who caused the crisis and there is failure of politicians in both parties to take action. One heavy criticism from both sides is that the movement doesn’t have a clear list of demands or grievances.  As if to say a list of realistic demands should be made and packaged neatly, so as to play the same game and keep on with the status quo.  As if to say the protesters should ask permission for equality, or supplicate/solicitate the elites.  This at its core is limiting, as we don’t yet know how big this movement can become, we don’t yet know what we can do and where we can go.  As citizens of this country, as global citizens, we must make room and be open to challenging the institutional injustices that we see.  Not just economic injustice, but environmental injustices, social injustices, and government corruption/eroding of democracy.  Utopia is not a free imagination, or about a world of perfection that we will never be able to achieve.   Utopia is a matter of innermost urgency; we are forced to imagine it as the only way out, as the only way of survival for our planet and our species.

Melissa Harris Parry of the nation is quoted as saying “In a world where capitalism is the only remaining economic system in meaningful operation, these protesters are faced with the task of imagining something concrete they can sell in the market place of ideas to replace existing frayed and tattered economies…they are demanding reform of the inequalities that are deeply embedded in this system. ”  Even if all the protestors go home tomorrow, even if the movement is dismantled and falls into anarchist subculture, this will continue to carry on in ways that we may not even be able to predict.  No one could have predicted that one woman not moving to the back of the bus would help to start a civil rights movement.   We should always choose to participate in attempting to make our world a better place, no matter how small the act seems.   Continue to educate yourself, use your best sense, and occupy spaces with hope and love for your neighbor (even the 1%).    We are all in this together.