This coming Monday, February 20th is a national day of action in support of prisoners organized by Occupy 4 Prisoners.  Here in New York City, the Prisoner Solidarity Working Group, which originally formed as a subcommittee of the People of Color Working Group, is planning a march and action in Harlem at the Lincoln Correctional Facility.  What follows is information from the Prisoner Solidarity Working Group. 

For those outside of NYC, find an action in your area here.

MASS ACTION AGAINST THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Monday February 20th, 2pm
Lincoln Correctional Facility
31 W. 110th Street, NYC

The Prisoner Support Working Group of Occupy Wall Street answers Occupy Oakland’s call to action and march in solidarity with the California Pelican Bay hunger strike, with brothers and sisters who are dispossessed by the criminal INJUSTICE system, and with political prisoners everywhere.

The Prison Industrial Complex = Capitalism on Steroids.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased seven-fold. African Americans make up 12 % of the population in the U.S. and 53% of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans enslaved under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than there were in 1850.

For more information visit occupy4prisoners.org or contact F20action@gmail.com.

Solidarity means that even if you win, you stand with everyone until everyone wins.

Poverty is, as the most basic definition states, the lack of resources sufficient for someone to live comfortably in society. For many, credit cards and loans have kept them in reasonable enough comfort that they have been able to put off acknowledging the grim realities of our economic system. Much of this myth of comfort and stability has fallen apart in recent years as the economic crisis has pushed more people into the uncomfortable position of realizing how close they are to a financial crisis of their own. Meanwhile, according to new poverty measures and census data, rates of poverty, particularly in rural communities and urban communities of color have risen to a 52 year high.

Complicated financial games and double speak mask much of what has been fueling the financial crisis. But as more and more people have found themselves with no work, no money and mounting debt problems, the financial tricks and gimmicks that have been keeping this wreck going seem more like smoke and mirrors.

Fueled by outrage over economic gluttony and seaming impunity on Wall Street, the Occupy moment took hold of a piece of anger lying deep in the hearts of masses of people. The proverbial pinch was being felt by too many. Pop! A would-be movement sprang forth representing those whom the promise of prosperity in exchange for hard work had been made and broken.

It should be made clear that Occupy Wall Street and the multitude of Occupies that have come alive around the US are not orchestrated nor primarily constituted by financially comfortable, gainfully employed, resource rich individuals. Plenty of unemployed, underemployed and broke ass people are taking on roles of organizers within Occupies. There are also those who rely on various forms of public assistance, both safety net programs like public housing and social security programs like unemployment. Further, the camps drew many from those forgotten and neglected corners of our communities: the houseless, those with mental health issues and substance use problems. Where camps remain these communities members also remain.

But to be clear – Occupy is not a poor people’s movement.
“How long are you broke before you are poor?” This was the question, posed by a Unitarian Universalist minister and organizer in Boston, Jason Lydon, while walking from one meeting to another. He, like many, feels being broke, struggling with cash flow and financial uncertainty as being a different identity than that of being poor.

As Occupy Wall Street and then the local Occupy Boston began to gain their legs and solidify their place in the public discourse, so too did an analysis. Corporate personhood, bank bail outs, executive bonuses and general Wall Street excess at the expense of democracy were at the top of the list of grievances. Personal stories have been told: stories of unemployment lasting two or more years, home foreclosures, bankruptcy due to medical expenses, untenable student loan debts and more.

These are the stories of people for whom the promise of security was broken. These too are those who are broke but for whom that sense of being able to live comfortably in society  is somewhat attainable. But for thousands, a promise of security was never made. No part of the system has ever worked in their favor and for decades the economy has failed them  in boom or bust.

Amidst seeming abundance of stuff and prosperity, the poor make a patchwork living that is a shadow of what many are able to attain.  In our overly commercialized and consumption-driven society, being poor can mean being left out and left behind. Left to create and build as best one can with limited resources but never looking like everyone else. Never seeing your life reflected back to you on TV, in the news, in advertisements. Not even close. This alone makes it less likely that the poor will take up in protest with Occupy. The society that Occupiers are mounting a defense of never included the poor in the same way.

But that does not mean the poor will not organize and rise up. Poor peoples movements have and continue to play an important role social and community change work. Here is a small list of examples out of a deep and rich history:

• Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• The National Welfare Rights Movement
• Domestic Workers Bill of Rights
• Take Back the Land
• City Life/Vida Urbana anti-foreclosure organizing in Boston
• United Farm Workers
• The unemployed workers movement during the great depression
• Poor People’s Campaign organized by Martin Luther King, JR and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
• Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
• All of Us or None: An organization of prisoners, former prisoners and felons, to combat discrimination.
• Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People’s Movement
• Western Regional Advocacy Project

Statistically speaking, the poor hold the space at the bottom of the 99%, earning less then $22,314 for a family of four. For an individual, the poverty threshold comes in at $10,890 a year in earnings, or around $900 a month. For most federal and state programs individuals are eligible for assistance within 200% to 300% of the federal poverty line. More than a reflection of earnings, the poor are a class unto themselves. The poor not only have precarious livelihoods that experience frequent economic disruption but also live in communities where there is generally less stability. Poor communities are often isolated either by location (i.e. rural isolation) or through systematic disenfranchisement. Examples include poor public transportation options, the closing of public hospitals in poor communities, and a lack of supermarkets, parks, walkable streets and sound infrastructure.

Making Room for the Poor

In his state of the Union Address President Obama mentioned poverty only once, and that was in passing. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney recently said he is “ not concerned about the very poor”. In today’s political discourse, the loss of the middle class dream that is most lamented. Every political candidate, pundit and journalist seems to be looking to champion the middle class. But no one wants to champion the poor or even acknowledge their existence. This goes, too, for much of the discourse emerging from the Occupy movement.

Just as much of society excludes the collective experience of the poor so too has Occupy. From the very beginning of Occupy Boston, there was a striking lack of an analysis of poverty being present in the discussions and messaging of actions. Demands and grievances have focused on personal gains rather then collective objectives: a middle-class desire for debt relief; the focus on individual corporations or banks rather than on the system of capitalism; a practice of policing individuals without a larger reflection on provocateurs and a collective reflection on the societal disrespect toward the mentally ill, homeless or substance addicted. So what would an analysis of poverty within Occupy look like?

• Historical reference points: Messaging and demands would be rooted in a historical analysis of years of cuts to social welfare spending and the toll those cuts have taken on communities of color in the U.S. Economic recovery, when it does come, often leaves scars in poor communities that look like cuts to social service and public welfare spending, including funding for economic development, housing, food assistance, aid to the elderly, education and job training. Additionally, since the Reagan era, poor communities have been blamed, bullied, marginalized and subjected to slander in the media.

• An understanding that this is not the first nor last moment in which people will face economic hardships: things have been getting worse on the ground for decades. This too is not the first time people have risen up (see above for just a sampling poor people’s movements). Both the political and popular discourse around poverty in the United States has always boiled down to the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. The U.S. welfare state was birthed out of a legacy of Elizabethan Poor Laws which placed the onus of one’s poverty squarely on one’s shoulders.  The only ones deserving of assistance were widows with children and anyone who could not work. The influence of this philosophy is felt throughout the history of the creation of the very limited U.S. welfare state. There is no culture of poverty. But there is a culture of reluctance and outright disdain for aid to the poor in American political discourse.

• The meme of the 1% and the 99% would be more actively developed and nuanced: the 99% includes people earning upwards of $400,000 a year. It also includes people who went to Harvard and while likely buried in debt, they have social access and privilege not enjoyed by many. The idea that the 99% meme is useful and popular should not overshadow the importance of examining power and privilege within the 99%. For example, the foreclosure crisis is amounting to the largest loss of land in the black community since the African slave trade tore people from their land. Unemployment among black men is at Depression era levels. Again, economic hardship hits some communities harder due to historical disenfranchisement, oppression and economic exclusion. Economic inequality is better represented in the U.S.  by looking at the 10% at the top versus the bottom 20%.

• Moving beyond individual interests to a collective understanding of shared interests for economic justice: protecting and improving social safety net and entitlement programs such as unemployment insurance,  food stamps, foreclosure protection and other social safety net programs, needs to be the context in which other demands such as financial industry regulation and an end to corporate personhood are placed. Messaging and tactics deployed against direct attacks to the social safety net that hit at poor communities the hardest with that distinctive Occupy analysis that ties economic hardship to big finance, could be powerful. A move in this direction would also create an opening for solutions to immediate needs of people now and in the long-term. There is a history worth noting in the U.S. of social movements winning demands that aid those in the middle more so as to relieve the pressure and slow the movement. Solidarity means that even if you win, you stand with everyone until everyone wins.

• Thinking global and local: the analysis that Occupy is formulating should invoke economic justice and economic rights and be born from the messages that have been raised up by poor people’s movements in the U.S. and Global South for decades. Further, there needs to be the acknowledgement that the relative prosperity here in the U.S. relies on the exploitation and subjugation of the Global South.

• A shift in praxis, or how the lessons and skills of Occupy are learned and acted upon: The way in which the economic crisis is conceived of and organized against needs to be informed by a systemic analysis of power, culture, history and economics that moves deeper into a social change model, one that re-envisions how our society meets the needs of everyone. Ending corporate personhood, for example, will not restore funding to much needed programs and services. It will not restore dignity and comfort to those left in the cold each night by homelessness. Only a cultural and societal change that internalizes an analysis of poverty and the poor will do that.

• Diversity of organizing structures to be inclusive of people of homeless and other economically stigmatized communities: much of the conflict that consumed the Dewey Square Occupy Boston camp revolved around the role homeless people played in the camp. Sometimes called junkies, other times called trouble, from the get-go there was little capacity within the camp to deal with the challenges. The typical structures of Occupy with the General Assemblies, consensus process and working group structures have limits when it comes to being inclusive of people who live in those dim and oft forgotten parts of society. The promise of meals everyday, protection in numbers and community drew the homeless to Occupy camps. For those struggling with mental health issues, living on the streets or in the shelter system and those whose struggle is compounded with substance use and addiction live frustrating lives everyday. Occupy camps also offered the promise of a space to be a part of addressing their needs. But organizing structures that were built at Occupy Boston mostly showed the divide between the priorities of the middle of the 99% and the needs of the bottom 10%. Violent and admittedly unstable personalities were present at Occupy Boston, but it was those personalities among the houseless (houseless, not homeless,Op is the preferred term of members of the community active in Occupy Boston) population that drew the most scorn. Plenty of young white, housed and comfortable men showed outright oppressive tendencies. But it was not these particpants in Occupy Boston whom the Good Neighbor Agreement was directed. Solutions have been sought within the established process and almost exclusively targeted problematic personalities within the houseless community.  What is more use of the the police and criminal justice system has been viewed as an acceptable option without discussion of the role these forces play in the oppression and ciminalization of homelessness. There are many organizing models and many examples of empowering organizing work that don’t rely on forcing marginalized and unheard communities with varying capacities to fit into our preferred process. Occupy needs to examine how its processes can and often do recreate the societal norm of excluding the voices of people living on the fringes.

• An analysis of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and its role in poor communities: the PIC, the criminal justice system and the police serve as methods of oppression and destruction in poor communities. The 99% analysis needs to acknowledge that for the bottom 10%-20% the police, prison guards and other agents of the criminal justice system are not allies and are certainly not “in it together” with poor communities of color. This is not about income but about the role these agents play in the criminalization of poverty. The approach to addressing inequality and societal disparities must not only look at income but also the roles people play in the systems of inequality. Occupy for Prisoners is an excellent example of solidarity between Occupy Oakland and prison abolition activists in recognition that there are many thousands locked up on the inside that can not join us in our meetings or in the streets as we fight for justice.

At the end of the day, Occupy needs to own who and what it is. It does not need to be a poor people’s movement. Plenty of people active in Occupies throughout the country are hurting and letting that hurt fuel their rage and conviction. But it will not serve anyone for Occupy to continue without an analysis of poverty.  This is about the top 10% versus the bottom 20%. Occupy can choose to align itself with either. But an Occupy movement that joins its interests with the interests of a poor people’s movement in a shared vision of economic justice would be remarkable and bold.

In turn, anti-poverty activist, organizers and community members need to dig deep and assess how the many voices, campaigns, organizations, groups and networks can be joined in a great new national anti-poverty poor people’s movement for economic justice.  We all deserve better, but what is better for some should not come without, or at the expense of, the poor.

Morrigan Phillips is a community social worker and organizer in Boston, MA. She works with Suvivors Inc./Mass.Welfare Rights Union and has been involved with Occupy Boston as a non-violent direct action trainer and member of the Health Justice working group. Morrigan can be found on twitter at @mbotastic.

1. Intro and motivation

The Occupy movement began in New York City’s Zucotti Park in September 2011, as a protest against economic inequality and specifically against the banks of Wall Street. Occupy quickly spread, and around the world camps were set up in public spaces, protesting against economic inequality, and organising themselves non-hierarchically, with decisions made in leaderless General Assemblies. The occupations are notable for their lack of a platform or list of demands, as shown in this statement from Occupy Oakland:

To the Politicians and the 1%: This occupation is its own demand. Since we don’t need permission to claim what is already ours, we do not have a list of demands to give you. There is no specific thing you can do in order to make us “go away”. And the last thing we want is for you to preserve your power, to reinforce your role as the ruling classes in our society.

What does it mean to say that “This occupation is its own demand”? I would argue that this expresses a desire for Participatory Democracy; a political system characterised by a lack of hierarchy, in which people participate directly in making decisions that affect them. This is in contrast to Representative Democracy, in which people vote for their rulers once every four or five years but apart from that have few opportunities to participate in decision-making. At least for some participants, the purpose of Occupy is not to influence government, but to replace it.

However the form of participatory democracy practised within the Occupy movement is far from perfect, and despite the best of intentions what happens in General Assemblies falls short of full and equal democratic participation for all. Many people are drawn into this movement by the promise of openness and equal participation, and so when these promises are not realised, people drift away.

In this article I’m going to look at how participatory democracy is practised within Occupy and related movements, show some of the problems that often come up, and suggest some improvements. I’m also going to talk more generally about how Participatory Democracy can be used in other types of organisations. Finally I’ll argue that Participatory Democracy isn’t just something that just happens in meetings, and that is requires a cultural shift in the way we think and related to each-other. This shift requires hard work, but in my opinion it’s definitely achievable.

I’m not involved in the Occupy movement. However I was involved for several years in the UK Camp for Climate Action, which had a similar organisational structure. I’m going to start by describing this organisational structure in a somewhat simplified and idealised way – every group is different so this won’t perfectly match any particular group.

2. Organisational Structure

The main decision-making bodies are Assemblies (or Main Meetings or Site Meetings, as we called them in Climate Camp) and Working Groups.

Assemblies / Main Meetings

This is a large meeting, usually held once a day, which everyone is welcome to come to. There may be several hundred participants. The meeting is guided by a facilitator, whose job is to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to make their voice heard. The Assembly is the only group that can make big, important decisions that affect the whole group. In order for a decision to be made, everyone present must agree to it.

As well as being a decision-making body, the Assembly provides an inspiring experience of seeing everybody all at in one place and feeling the power of being in a large group of people with common goals.

Working Groups

The Assembly decides broad policy, but since it’s very difficult for a large group to make detailed decisions, the detailed work is done by working groups. Working groups report back to the Assembly to make sure that they are doing what the Assembly wants them to do.

An example of how this can work in practice: during the preparation for the 2009 Climate Camp, some people were concerned that the Media Group might say things to the press that did not reflect the views of the whole group. Members of the Media Group replied that they couldn’t possibly take every press release to a meeting to be vetted before-hand. So a solution was found: the whole group agreed to three key messages for the Media Group to use in all their interactions with the press. The Media Group was then free to write press releases and do interviews, within the framework of sticking to those key messages. In my view this was a great solution, since it gave the Media Group freedom to do their work, while giving the rest of the collective confidence in what the Media Group was doing.

As well as assemblies and working groups, there may be other decision-making bodies, groups who have a particular identity, theme, or purpose. This could include: affinity groups (small groups of people who go to a protest together with the intention of sticking together and supporting each-other) groups based on a particular geographical region (such as the Neighbourhoods at the Climate Camps), groups based on religion, feminist groups, or a group such as Decolonise Wall Street. These groups might hold their own meetings, and send a representative or delegate to speak on behalf of their group in the Assembly.

3. Problems with decision-making

Problems with consensus decision-making in large groups / General Assemblies

We usually talk about consensus as if it was a switch that can be either on or off; either a decision was made by consensus, or it wasn’t. In my view it’s more useful to think of a spectrum, ranging from “bad consensus”, through “OK consensus”, to “good consensus”.

Good consensus: All members of the group are empowered, treat each-other with respect, and have all the information they need to make a good decision. They have plenty of time, and they have a comfortable place in which to hold the meeting. Everyone understands what the problem is, they listen thoughtfully to each-other’s ideas, and work together to come up with the best possible solution, taking everyone’s desires and concerns into account.

Most people who’ve taken part in consensus decision-making will recognise that it doesn’t usually go that way. But when it does, it feels great, and leaves people feeling excited and inspired.

OK consensus: The decision was made in a way that was less than ideal, but everyone in the group is pretty much OK with it. Perhaps some members of the group didn’t know what was going on, but didn’t feel confidant enough to ask questions. Maybe the group was running out of time, and so the facilitator put pressure on to make a decision quickly, without exploring all possibilities, but no-one thinks the decision that was made is terrible.

Bad consensus: The decision was a “consensus” in name only; in reality some members of the group are really unhappy with it. There are many ways a bad consensus can come about, here are a few examples:

• Some people in the meeting couldn’t understand or couldn’t hear, and so had no idea what was going on; the decision ended up being made by the small group of people standing closest to the facilitator.
• The meeting stretched on for hours, discussing a controversial topic without reaching agreement. Finally most people left for dinner or bed, and the small group of people who remained made the decision, even though it was a decision the rest of the group was unhappy with.
• The group was pressed for time, so the facilitator put on pressure to decide quickly, When an agenda topic was introduced, a confidant, experienced member of the group said: “I propose we do such-and-such” and everyone agreed, since they didn’t want to be the person who held up the whole group.
• The agenda was long and many complicated topics were discussed. A person came to the (large) meeting wanting to talk about a particular topic that was important to them, but they couldn’t figure out who to talk to to get it put on the agenda. Or they talked to the facilitator, who said, “We’ll fit that into the section on X”, but there was only 15 minutes allotted for X, with the result that the person ended up sitting through a long meeting, and didn’t get the chance to talk about what they wanted to talk about at all.

There are many more examples. Lazy, thoughtless, and unplanned meetings will usually result in bad consensus. Bad consensus is the default option, while good consensus takes work and effort to bring about, and a particular decision can seem like a good consensus to some people and a bad consensus to others.

The consequences of bad consensus are sometimes invisible. The immediate consequences can be that the group makes a poor decision. Not only do people feel frustrated, but they do not feel motivated to back up the decision with hard work and enthusiasm, and they feel less committed to the group. People who feel this way tend to drift away silently.

A group that mostly does “bad” consensus isn’t really a functioning participatory democracy, it’s probably run by an unofficial in-group. They certainly want to be a participatory democracy, but the reality is that people in the in-group will find it easiest to have a real say. The group tries to be open and partly succeeds, but people who have ties to the in-group (through friendship networks, or similar backgrounds) will find it easiest to get involved. This is what usually happens; not deliberately, but because it turns out running a real participatory democracy is hard work.

I’m going to look more at problems arising from the way meetings are run, and specifically with the role of the facilitator, in part 5.

Problems with Working Groups

Working Groups are set up to do a particular task. For example, some of the Working Groups we had at the Climate Camps were: Alt Tech, Kitchens, Water and Plumbing, Kids’ Space, Workshops and Entertainments, Media, Indymedia, Police Liaison, and Tranquility (like Security, but nicer).

There’s a tendency for Working Groups to be run by a small number of very dedicated, very hard-working people. These people gain lots of skills and knowledge, work 14-hour-days, get burnt-out, and don’t have any time to spare for training others. There is a problem of professionalisation: if you’re the only person who knows how to do the job, it’s much easier and faster to just do it, than to train someone else. And if you’re used to doing the job to a certain standard, it’s hard to step back and let someone else take over, when they might not do it as well as you would like.

The most interesting and empowering tasks are done in Working Groups, and while these groups are theoretically open for anyone to join, in reality it can be hard for outsiders to get involved. Outsiders sometimes have trouble finding out what working groups exist, what work they do, where and when they meet, and how to get in touch with them. This can lead to complaints that there is an invisible hierarchy doing all the interesting stuff, while “outsiders” are only invited to do the more boring and menial tasks.

There can also be an (unintended) lack of transparency and accountability. Since it isn’t clear to everyone what a given working group is doing, the working group could do something that some members of the wider group strongly disagree with.

To conclude section 3: one of the main reasons people join a movement like Occupy is the promise of being able to fully participate. However as a result of all the problems discussed in this section this promise is not fully realised; our movements grow to a certain size, and after that point “new” people find it increasingly difficult to participate fully, and to take on interesting and challenging roles. Our participatory democracy has a scaling problem, where our groups can’t grow past a certain size.

This problem seems even worse when we recognise that, not only do our movements tend to include informal in-groups and out-groups, but these often line up with existing social hierarchies of race, age, gender, sexuality, ability, class, etc.

However I think these problems can be overcome, and I’ll start talking about how to do that in the next section.

4. Transparency / Open Source Organising

Some (but not all) of the problems described in the previous section can be solved by doing transparency really well.

The purposes of transparency are:

• To make sure every sub-group of the organisation is accountable to the wider group, by making sure that everyone can easily find out what the sub-group is doing.
• To help the organisation grow by making it as easy as possible for people who are interested in an organisation to find out what the organisation does, and to get up to speed as quickly as possible in order to join in with the group’s activities and decision-making.
• To make it possible for the work done by a group or sub-group to be replicated or improved on in future, and thus to prevent mistakes from being repeated, and to help the movement as a whole to learn and grow.

The UK Climate Camps and Occupy London (and I’m guessing many other groups as well) intend to be transparent, but don’t fully achieve this, because achieving transparency takes some work and some co-ordination. That being said, being transparent isn’t really all that difficult – it mostly consists of typing up notes about what you did and putting them on the Internet somewhere. I’m going to look at the nitty-gritty of how transparency works in practice.

For an organisation that holds Assemblies, an important step is to put the minutes of the meetings in some publicly accessible space (probably online) in a timely fashion so that anyone can read them. An example is provided by Occupy London Stock Exchange. Occupy LSX also live-streams their Assemblies to the Internet. They’ve put real effort into being as transparent as possible. Nevertheless, it would be pretty hard for an outsider to quickly learn about what decisions have already been made, because they have posted what seem to be word-for-word transcripts of their Assemblies, which go on for pages. An improvement would be to add a short, readable summary of the main points from each meeting, so that people could quickly get up to speed. An example such a summary can be found here: Climate Camp National Gathering minutes Glasgow (PDF). (I admit this is a cherry-picked example, most of the time Climate Camp minutes did not include nice summaries like this, and sometimes we didn’t even manage to post minutes at all!)

Transparency is even more of a problem for working groups, because often they don’t meet regularly, and people often don’t know what they’re doing, or even that they exist. Since working groups do their work in an ad-hoc way instead of in formal meetings, it’s not as clear how to become transparent. I like the idea of a lab notebook: in high school science class I was told to write down everything I did, clearly enough and in enough detail that another person would be able to repeat everything I’d done just by following the notebook. Instead of a notebook, I’d suggest that working groups could have a space online where they write down everything they do, in enough detail that someone else would be able to replicate it.

I was about to write that I don’t think any group has managed to implement transparency at the working group level yet, but then I did a quick Google search and found that Occupy Santa Cruz has an impressive page of notes about the activities of their working groups!

Sometimes the activities of a working group need to be secret in order to protect the safety of the working group’s members, or for some other reason. This always leads to a less-democratic system, it’s a trade-off.

While implementing transparency is hard work, it’s actually the low-hanging fruit. In the next sections I’ll talk about even bigger challenges.

5. Facilitators

In any big protest group there are people who have specialised skills. Some people know how to cook for 300 people. Some people know how to put up a marquee or build a compost toilet. Some people know how to design a flyer, and some know how to build a website. As much as we value skill-sharing, it isn’t possible for everyone to learn to do everything.

Facilitating big meetings is another specialised skill; knowledge, training and practice are required to do it well. However I’m going to argue that facilitating is fundamentally different from other areas of expertise. Facilitators know how to run meetings, how to make sure everyone’s voice can be heard, and how to make consensus decisions. In short, facilitators know how to do participatory democracy. But if you think about it, participatory democracy can only work properly if everyone in the group knows how to do it. So I’m suggesting that, in order to make our groups more democratic, we need to make sure everyone has the ability to facilitate.

I’m going to give some concrete examples of problems that arise from the situation where meetings are run by a facilitator who has specialised skills and knowledge that the rest of the meeting participants lack.

• Unconscious bias: Ideally a facilitator tries hard to be neutral and fair, but they inevitably have their own views and preferences which colour the way they run the meeting. This isn’t such a big problem if there is a large, diverse pool of facilitators, since in that case the different sets of biases can more-or-less cancel each-other out. However when there are only a few facilitators, especially in the common situation that they all know each-other and have similar viewpoints, the bias can become systematic.
• Agenda setting: In large meetings there are generally lots of people with topics they would like the group to discuss, and not enough time to discuss them all, so the facilitator has to have some sort of system for soliciting agenda items and deciding which ones go on the agenda and how much time they get. This process can be mysterious to others – people might not know how to go about getting an item added to the agenda, or why some items are included and others are not. Not knowing what’s going on leaves people unable to meaningfully take part. A transparent process for setting the agenda is needed.
• Power struggles: Here’s a common scenario in big meetings: the group has a decision to make, and an experienced activist and respected member of the group, who I’ll call EA, already knows what the best solution is. EA keeps interrupting the discussion, and behaves in an increasingly dominating way out of frustration at watching the group go through a long and, from their point of view, unnecessary, discussion. This leads to a power struggle between EA and the facilitator. EA keeps interrupting and saying things like: “this is a waste of time, I already know what to do, let’s just agree to do it my way and move on”. The facilitator keeps saying things like “please wait your turn to speak” and “can we hear from someone else please”. EA becomes so frustrated and angry that it’s truly painful to watch, and ends up stomping out in disgust partway through the meeting, thinking “This consensus stuff is a waste of time, next time I need to get something done I’ll just get a few of my friends together and do it without wasting all this time in meetings.”By this point EA and the facilitator probably loathe each-other. EA thinks that the facilitator is a power-mad bureaucratic time-waster, while the facilitator thinks that EA wants to use intimidation to make the group do what she wants. In fact EA and the facilitator both want what’s best for the group. The conflict arises from their different understandings of what the purpose of the discussion is. EA thinks the purpose is simply to make the best possible decision. She knows what the best decision is, so the group should just agree to that. End of story.The facilitator is concerned with having a good process for making the decision. From the facilitator’s point of view, a confident, respected person might be able to convince the group to agree to their way of doing things without really understanding it, but this wouldn’t be a “good” consensus. It wouldn’t leave people feeling empowered and committed, and in fact it would contribute to an invisible hierarchy, where only people in the in-group really know what’s going on.After EA stomps off, the group continues its discussion and quite likely ends up arriving at the same solution that EA had proposed from the start. From EA’s perspective the discussion was a gigantic waste of time, but from the facilitator’s point of view the discussion was an important group learning process which led to a “good” consensus; a consensus that everyone understands and agrees with and feels committed to.In this scenario a lot of struggle and frustration could have been avoided, if EA and the facilitator had had the same idea in mind of what the purpose of a meeting is.
• Making sure everyone can participate fully: Part of a facilitator’s role is to be aware that some people find it much harder to speak and be listened to than others. The reasons for this include: individual self-confidence, belonging to an in-group or being an outsider, and social hierarchies along lines of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and others. A facilitator should pay attention to who speaks and who is listened to, and uses various techniques to create a space where everyone can participate fully. These techniques could include taking hands (to avoid a situation where only people who are loud and confidant enough to interrupt can be heard), using a progressive stack, doing go-rounds where everyone gets a chance to speak, or specifically asking for someone who hasn’t spoken much to speak.In my opinion the work of learning about the different hierarchies that exist in our society, learning to notice who is speaking a lot and who is silence, and actively looking for ways to create a space where everyone can be heard, is too important to be left to just the facilitator. This work needs to be done by everyone in order for a functioning participatory democracy to be possible.

I’ve argued that the skills and knowledge needed to facilitate a large meeting are also the skills and knowledge that everyone in the meeting needs in order to be able to participate fully. This leads to the conclusion that we need to focus on providing more facilitation trainings, and encouraging everyone to get trained up, and making sure everyone gets practice running meetings in order to develop these skills.

It’s not quite that simple though: lots of people in our movements have no interest in learning to facilitate. Furthermore, lots of people disagree with the way meetings are run. If they did attend a facilitation training they would probably say: “That’s nonsense, if I run a meeting I’m not going to do it like that”.

So we have to start a conversation. We need to talk to those who have no interest in facilitation and try to make them understand why we think it’s important for them to gain these skills. We also need to listen to criticisms of the way we run meetings and make decisions, and be willing to make changes and experiment. The way we currently do consensus decision-making isn’t the only possible way to do it, and instead of unthinkingly following the consensus process we were taught, we need to be willing to question it, and accept that some parts of it might not make a whole lot of sense, and might not work in every situation. Those who hate meetings and hate facilitation have a wealth of insight to offer the rest of us into how we could improve.

Basically, we need to start working towards getting a consensus on how we get consensus.

6. Participatory democracy requires a certain kind of culture

In previous sections I’ve argued that participatory democracy requires everyone to be able to participate fully in decision-making (which, I know, is pretty obvious). In section 5 I mentioned that social hierarchies exist in society which make it harder for everyone’s voice to be heard. I listed some of the strategies a facilitator can use to mitigate this, and I argued that in a functioning participatory democracy everyone must learn these strategies.

I’m going to take it further, and say that it isn’t possible to just challenge social hierarchies within meetings, without also challenging them more generally in our day-to-day lives. Participatory democracy isn’t just a particular organisational structure and it doesn’t just happen in meetings, it is a particular kind of culture. The work and the collective learning process that needs to be done to create this democratic culture occurs in all parts of life, not just in meetings.

Various prejudices are “baked in” to our society, and microaggressions which marginalise and hurt people are normal parts of our day-to-day interactions. In fact, these microagressions are so normal that we sometimes do them without meaning to, and without intending to marginalise anyone. However if people find themselves marginalised within an organisation, they probably won’t stick around very long. Thus marginalisation doesn’t just go against our ideals, it also stops our movements from growing. Unfortunately this isn’t just an abstract idea, it’s easy to find examples of people who have experienced racism, sexism, or a lack of awareness of the particular problems faced by minority groups, which left them feeling marginalised and unwelcome in the Occupy movement. Often these are people whose passion, ideas, and desire for social change would be extremely valuable. Here are a few examples turned up by a quick Google search:

Racialicious: Private Danny Chen and why I will never again reach out to OWS about something that matters to me

In Front and Center: On being Muslim: The hijab and social activism

AmericanPaki: Why I am not protesting at Occupy

In Front and Center: Letter to the Occupy Together Movement

Occupy Patriachy: Petition to address sexual assault at Occupy Boston

Occupy Patriachy: Objectifying women has no place in the Occupy movement

In most of these instances, the marginalising behaviour was carried out by individuals, not by Occupy Wall Street or any other organisation. Some instances took place within meetings and some took place outside of meetings. When organisations are challenged about these problems, the responses are often “that’s just one person’s opinion, it’s not our official policy”, and “we can’t control individual people’s behaviour”. These responses aren’t good enough. No-one wants to be part of a movement where they are officially equal but where in everyday interactions they are marginalised. In order to grow, our movements have to collectively take responsibility for combating marginalisation that happens on the level of day-to-day interactions.

This doesn’t mean that we have to police each-other’s behaviour or conduct a witch-hunt every time someone says something racist or sexist. In my view, a very good start would be for groups to agree to a statement such as “We commit individually and collectively to countering marginalising behaviours. We will help and support each-other to do this work.” Further possible steps could include making information and resources on how to do this work available to everyone involved in the movement, and carrying out other educational activities to support each-other in this work. Many groups are already doing this work: for example Occupy Boston replaced one of their General Assemblies with an anti-oppression training. It probably isn’t possible to completely remove hierarchy from our movements, but the more we work on this, the more our movements will be able to grow.

I’m not an expert of how to challenge oppression, in fact I’m just learning about this stuff myself, so I’ll just list some links that may be helpful for people who are just getting started learning about this sort of thing:

“Check my what?” On privilege and what we can do about it.

In Front and Center: Anti-oppression resources

In Front and Center: 5 Tips for White Allies in the Occupy Movement

7. Conclusion

In this article I talked about Participatory Democracy in a somewhat unusual way. I didn’t just look at formal decision-making structures, but also at culture, and the way people relate to each-other both in and outside of meetings. I also suggested that Participatory Democracy isn’t like a switch that can be turned on or off, it’s an ideal; it’s probably not possible to get it 100% right (this would be a situation in which everyone is fully able to be heard and to meaningfully participate) but we can always strive to get closer to this ideal.

I made four recommendations for organisations such as Occupy which want to become more democratic:

• Transparency: record all decisions and actions in a publicly accessible space
• Aim to have everyone in the group able to facilitate through lots of training, mentoring, and also making space for having discussions about how we run meetings, and working towards a situation where everyone understands and consents to the way meetings are run.
• Individuals work on themselves to remove hierarchy from interactions both in meetings and in day-to-day life.
• Organisations collectively agree to support individuals to do this work (perhaps through offering trainings or information).

One thing that’s become clear to me in the course of writing this is that to move towards a functioning Particpatory Democracy is not easy, in fact it requires a huge amount of effort, both on an individual level and on the level of organisations. However this shouldn’t come as a surprise; after all, we weren’t born knowing how to survive within a society based on capitalist competition, most of us had to spend 12 years in school being taught how to do this. It’s not surprising that learning a completely different way of organising society takes time and effort.

I also want to acknowledge that making changes within large organisations can be very difficult. Even if you agree with the recommendations I’ve made, others in your organisation may not agree, or there may not be time and space available to even discuss this. So even while I’m making these suggestions, I recognise that it might not always be possible to carry them out. The truth is that, while I do have some ideas about how to take these ideas forward in my own life, I’m pretty sure that what makes sense for me in my particular set of circumstances isn’t going to make sense for others. So at this point I’m going to trust whoever is reading this to think of ways forward that make sense in their own lives.

And though I agree with their overall analysis, many of the same Occupy-ers and insurrectionists who seem to value above all else militant confrontation with the police (as much as someone unarmed can actually “confront” a heavily armed force who have state-sanctioned powers to kill) now act shocked that cops don’t follow the letter of the law, white kids can get arrested for walking down a street, and jail is not a good place.

Such “politicizing” experiences of spending a weekend in jail – celebrated in the manarchist culture of back-slapping camaraderie shared by those for whom jail is a rebellious and exotic adventure – only highlight some of the many ways that privilege and punishment land unequally on the differently raced, gendered and classed bodies who get swept up in mass arrests of the 99% movement.

Are every one of those movements in other places and times somehow savvier, more tightly coordinated, better trained than our own fractious masses in the here and now? Certainly not. Of course there is much we stand to learn from comrades who have been fighting and winning social struggles against austerity and budget cuts around the world. But should we wait until political leaders and organizations organize Occupy into a winning campaign that privileges unity, compromise and conventional forms of electoral power over the messy business of experimenting with utopian forms of direct democracy? Hell, no. Judging by the enthusiasm that swept through Oakland to joyfully reclaim public spaces, side with foreclosed residents to prevent evictions and turn out in force in the foggy pre-dawn hours to hold picket lines, many of us are eager and primed for politicized engagements beyond the ballot box or the arduous petitioning for change that accompanies being told by political leaders and experts what is and isn’t possible.

Since its bizarre origins as an Adbusters brainchild, Occupy has seemed like an out-of-control bus with no driver behind the wheel, careening wildly and sideswiping political organizations, labor unions, wingnuts and everyone else. It inspired many in the world by calling the first General Strike in the US in decades. With reckless, visionary ambition and rather disingenuous co-optation it coordinated a multiple port shutdown on the West Coast. What it seems to have awakened in all of us, anarchists as well as Democrats and Stalinists, is our own control-freaky desires to hijack the bus we’re left resentfully chasing after – to shape, manipulate, denounce, and take over this diffuse, wildly disagreeable, polymorphous beast in accordance with our own political ideals.

Occupy’s most visible bullhorn-carriers, spokespeople and tireless organizers are recognizable to anyone familiar with the Bay Area anarchist/ insurrectionist scene. Undoubtedly, Occupy supporters will insist that its main players are not majority white and neither are the other Occupy adherents, but one need only look at the protests themselves, or the photos that Occupy activists post.

Occupy Oakland’s high-drama performances of protest bravado raise the question: Does it matter who occupies land, who burns the flag, who storms city hall? Can we think about tactics and strategy separately from the actors who use them? In Oakland, are riots now a white thing? When white people riot in the name of people of color, is it still a white riot? Are meetings with the mayor doomed to be the authentic “grassroots people of color” approach?

The most exciting politics transform previously normalized and violent relationships, processes and systems from invisibility into articulation, to being controlled by and accountable to the people who have the fewest social privileges. In short, people who hadn’t had any control over their own lives now do.

In our messy world of inequities and contradictions, blindsided by subjective experience and trauma, the reality is that the most radical of anti-authoritarian projects are imperfect and fraught with confusing contradictions.

The brief romance between Occupy and many in my communities terminated abruptly in late December when a group of local indigenous organizers asked Occupy Oakland to change its name from “Occupy” to “Decolonize” to respect the area’s history and Native activism. These organizers had recently organized a 108-day occupation and saved a burial site in a nearby city from destruction. They would have had much to contribute to the project in Oscar Grant plaza. But “Decolonize” was voted down. The Native activists from Oakland were accused of being divisive and irrelevant, and even of being undercover federal agents. While many perspectives exist and they do not fall neatly along raced lines, the experience was for me and others I know profoundly disheartening. Many people of color whose political work include an analysis of colonization stepped back from Occupy after this vote.

Of course, not all of those who were caught up in the police sweeps on Saturday are young, white or privileged.

Ultimately, what I ask is this: What would the tactics of occupation, expropriation and redistribution look like if they were truly available to and representative of Oakland’s varied communities, who have specific and unique cultures and different historical trauma?

What if all the people who have been mistreated by police officers for the first time on Saturday think about what it might be like if one couldn’t engage arrest and jailtime so flippantly, if indeed most of one’s daily life, mobility, identity and race was shaped by the ever-expanding nexus of administrative and judicial systems of control that make up the prison-industrial-complex? What if the project of “the 99%” centered those experiences and concerns in its vision for confronting state power? (Indeed, the National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners on February 20th provides us an opportunity to make good on that potential.)

Perhaps Occupy Oakland does not have the ability to change itself to meet all the needs I list above. It is likely Occupy Oakland and I want different things. I don’t wish it gone. On the contrary, I wish a similar encampment or project existed in every plaza, on every block, in every foreclosed home and abandoned building. I will continue to cautiously and critically support the movement inspired by Occupy as best as I can, and hope that over time there will be more such projects to support, some of which will truly speak to my communities and be more relevant to our needs and experiences. Occupy politics have done a lot to invigorate thousands of people across the world, and in Oakland, it seems to have imbued many (white men, it seems, in particular) with a sense of agency and urgency to engage and reshape the world into one that is – at least in name – more just. In the “mainstream,” Occupy Wall Street has changed what newspapers cover, and how economics is talked about. Occupy has become to Debt what verbs are to nouns. That is momentous. Thanks to Occupy Wall Street we can all get away with a little more when we’re fighting against the current in the straight world.

Here at home, I hope that all of us decolonizers and revolutionaries and other sorts of militant dreamers who are passionately excited about direct democracy and autonomous self-determination might figure out how to engage critically and compassionately in this moment and continue the work in our own lives, learning and adapting as we go. I hope we resist the bait that will be offered to us by politicians and leaders who want to turn us against radical and militant tactics, who will condemn building takeovers and blame Saturday’s police riot on the people who were gassed and arrested. I hope that those of us planning for the Occupy May Day General Strike will prioritize and support direction from and respectfully collaborate with the multitude of women, men and students who left work and school to march down the streets of Fruitvale back on May 1st in 2006, sometimes risking livelhoods and deportation to take a stand. I hope that Occupy’s horizontalist forms and utopian militancy might inspire us queers, migrants, people of color and other radicals to believe that our wildest dreams can be political platforms, to re-imagine a political landscape outside the paradigm of state power and move past the impulse to define justice as legislative equality.

(What follows does not reflect or represent the views of the People of Color Caucus at Occupy Wall Street but only the views of the author himself.)

At the notorious Occupy Wall Street spokes council meetings, the People of Color (POC) Caucus, of which I am a member, often finds itself in the role of whistle-blowing and bringing a critical perspective to the discussion. I have gotten the sense that most people at spokes — sometimes including the facilitators — just want to “get through” the agenda with little to no drama or disruptions.  While I can relate, given that these meetings are long and often frustrating, this approach doesn’t create a culture that fosters critical thinking or the voicing of dissent.  So, often when the POC Caucus voices concerns about a proposal being made or something happening in the room, I sense a lot of hostility towards us.

Last week, the issue of banning “violent people” from Occupy Wall Street came up at a spokes council meeting I attended.  Those of us in the POC spoke shared the deep concern of the majority in the room that certain individuals have made others feel unsafe by committing physically aggressive or violent acts towards others.  Many at the meeting were getting understandably worked up about it and insisted on a zero-tolerance type policy when it comes to violence and thus banning so-called violent people for life from OWS.

When it was finally our turn to speak on stack, I raised a question about the meaning of the word violent and how we wanted to make sure people are specific about the actions of a person being deemed “violent.”  Violence means different things to different people.  Violence can be verbal, physical, sexual, institutional, or state-sanctioned.  Pushing someone could be seen as violent. Yelling could be seen as violent.  Damaging property could be seen as violent.  Raising your voice and calling out racism or sexism in a meeting could be seen as violent (no, this is not a hypothetical scenario).

So, we were concerned about three “violent” people (all who happened to be people of color themselves) being permanently banned from OWS and kicked out of the church they were living in without being clear and on the same page about what constitutes violence.  We have not had this conversation at Occupy.  Many assumptions are made when people talk about someone being violent, and to raise the question is apparently taboo.

As soon as I opened my mouth with our concern, dozens were down-twinkling with looks of disgust on their face, muttering sarcastically to each other, and even shouting out loud, shocked and appalled that I would even ask such a question.  The sense in the room was, “There goes POC again causing trouble and holding us up from moving forward.”  People assumed we were condoning the actions of the “violent” people in question simply because we raised a question about what violence means.

I was pissed.  No one was listening to what I was saying.  I’m a very calm and collected person.  I use my words carefully and deliberately.  I was not being the slightest bit antagonistic.  But even for someone as calm as me, I could barely finish expressing my concern because of the backlash that was unleashed as soon as I opened my mouth.

One of my POC Caucus comrades eventually couldn’t take it any more and spoke out of “process” to explain that raising these sorts of concerns is exactly why we exist as a caucus at spokes council.  Because communities of colors have suffered violence for generations — the violence of white supremacy, the violence of the police, the violence of mass incarceration, the violence of poverty.  Again, no one listened to what she was saying but only put up their “point of process” hand signs and rolled their eyes.

I was talking about it with another friend from the POC Caucus on the phone the next day, and he felt like we have lost all good faith in the spokes council.  We have no credibility whatsoever anymore.

Honestly, it’s been a tough couple of months of figuring out how to engage with this movement.  A lot of people who I consider comrades, friends, and fellow travelers have gotten fed up with the dynamics at spokes council as well as other meetings and have understandably stopped showing up.  It’s been hard.  Sometimes I feel like my role is far too focused on process, and I’d rather be focusing on something that feels more concrete, something that has tangible results, something that feels more like action.

But what I always come back to is that if we can’t figure out these kinds of process questions, what are we really building?  Most of us can agree that Occupy Wall Street is not only about confronting big banks, corporations, and the state, but also about creating alternatives to this oppressive system.  How we in this movement interact with each other, hold ourselves and each other accountable, and sustain our community are questions just as important as what our message is and what our next direct action is.

I remember when I first got involved in OWS in late September I would always tell people that the “how” is just as important as the “what” when it comes to this movement. And that’s what makes it so different from other mass movements, and that’s what I’m so excited and inspired by.

I’m less than inspired right now by the “how” of OWS, but continue to believe that we must figure it out if we intend to be a lasting force.  We have to create the processes to deal with ugly and yes, violent, situations, and these processes must reflect our values, not the values the status quo.

When I raised the question about what violence means at the spokes council meeting last week, one person defensively responded that the person in question was “dragged out by the police,” and has had the cops called on them several times.  From what I could tell, this was compelling evidence to the majority of the room that this person was clearly a pathological violent disruptor who must be kicked out of the movement for life.  Clearly if a cop drags someone out of a meeting, there is no question that the person being dragged away 1) deserves it and 2) is without a question a violent aggressor who must be thrown out indefinitely.

The irony was too much for me.  The NYPD are now champions of keeping us safe?  Well, if we are using police intervention as our barometer of whether someone is violent or not, then maybe the next step, as a friend jokingly suggested, will be to create a Jail and Prison Working Group and then a Solitary Confinement Working Group to keep the disrupters in check.  Maybe we can recruit some of our cop friends to facilitate those meetings.  They are, after all, the 99%, aren’t they?

What can I say—things have gotten out of control.

I have a feeling that many in OWS would agree with Audre Lorde’s statement, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”  But are we willing to make the leap that is necessary to embody this as individuals and as a movement?  Are we willing to stop reacting impulsively and aggressively to difficult situations (and difficult people) and start listening for change?  Are we willing to create new tools that may not already exist?

These process questions that many of us have been grappling with may very well make or break OWS.  The good folks in the Safer Spaces Working Group along with many others have been working hard to come up with community agreements and an accountability process rooted in anti-oppression and transformative justice.  But we have such a long way to go to get the buy in of the “average” person at OWS.

On the one hand I’m tired of this conversation, I’m tired of being down-twinkled at, I’m tired of the POC Caucus not being taken seriously, I’m tired.  But if we can make it through this together and adopt radical, transformative justice approaches to accountability, violence, and harm in our community, perhaps we will in turn be well on our way to creating viable alternatives to this system we all abhor.

On January 31, family farmers will take part in the first phase of a court case filed to protect farmers from genetic trespass by Monsanto’s GMO seed, which can contaminate organic and non-GMO farmers’ crops and opens them up to abusive lawsuits. In the past two decades, Monsanto’s seed monopoly has grown so powerful that they control the genetics of nearly 90% of five major commodity crops including corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets.  The judge has agreed to hear oral arguments in this landmark case to decide whether or not this case will move forward.

The OWS Food Justice working group, along with Food Democracy Now, will peacefully assemble at 9am in Foley Square to support the farmers.  As their action, they are adopting SASI’s artistic intervention, and will be holding up signs depicting a timeline of Monsanto’s sordid history.  Please join and stand in solidarity against Monsanto.  The hearing starts at 10am and will last anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

WELCOME TO D.C.

“Occupy is not a panacea, but an opening. It will help us clear the way to a more mature political landscape. It has begun to breathe in the many currents of dissatisfaction and breathe out a new radical imagination.” Vijay Prashad

The question of what the “Occupy” movement is has concerned us ever since it spread to Washington D.C. in October of last year. After witnessing Occupy Wall Street’s tremendous growth in New York, we were inspired to see for ourselves the potential for radical mobilization in our city, where the corporate and state arms of global capital meet. The seat of power in the United States, D.C. has a long history as a center for protest, frequently drawing in activists from all over the country. It is also home to 600,000 legislatively and electorally disenfranchised residents, who have been engaged in their own unique struggles. Occupy D.C. had (and in some respects still has) exciting potential to work in solidarity with these community struggles and catalyze radical growth here and around the country.

From day one, we spent considerable time at Occupy D.C.’s chosen encampment, McPherson Square, a quiet park situated two blocks from the White House on K St. (this location was strategic and symbolic, as downtown K St. is recognized for its concentration of corporate headquarters and lobbying firms.) As anarchists committed to direct democracy, we helped build up the Facilitation committee and worked to implement consensus building processes at general assemblies, spokescouncils, and working groups. We watched the occupation grow quickly from a small group of no more than fifty people making and holding signs, to a “tent city” practicing mutual aid, with free medical care, a free kitchen, and its own library, among other things. Marches grew from ten or twenty people with poorly coordinated chants to hundreds of marchers taking the streets, blocking traffic, and barricading or taking over targeted buildings.

Occupy represented an exciting, transformative moment that saw rage and disillusion fuse with direct action tactics in a strike against oppressive institutions. It brought together hundreds of strangers who might have never worked together, deeply inspired and reinvigorated many burned-out activists, and fostered the development of leadership among a new generation of young radicals—all while helping change the national discourse around inequality. But the movement also has flaws, some quite serious, and they merit further examination.

It was many of these shortcomings that resulted in our very intentional abstention from Occupy D.C. Having stepped back from McPherson, we want to critically reflect on these past few months. 2012 will be a crucial year for popular uprising, as revolutions continue around the world, and as the U.S. gears up for the most expensive presidential election in history. We can learn a lot from the Occupy movement—its successes and failures—and use that experience to keep building momentum and guide popular discontent toward revolutionary struggle.

"DC activists lead an anti-oppression workshop at McPherson Square in October." Photo credit: Rooj Alwazir

ON REVOLUTION AND LIBERALISM

The Occupy movement—sometimes referred to as the “American Autumn’—was self-consciously inspired by the Arab Spring, especially the uprisings in Tahrir Square. But while the two can be regarded as part of the same global uprising against oppressive regimes, the former has fallen short of the revolutionary character of the latter. To reach their revolutionary moment, Egyptians struggled against Mubarak’s dictatorship for decades and took advantage of a series of escalating grievances to mobilize mass populations and build a real democracy. They made, and continue to make, real blood sacrifices to achieve these goals—sacrifices that we have not made.

What is this moment, then, if not revolutionary? Occupy is a populist movement that the Left can participate in for the first time in decades. The tagline “We are the 99%” and protests against corporate personhood tap into populist rage against capitalist excesses and income inequality.

The political ambiguity of the Occupy movement—its resistance to partisan affiliations, to formulating specific demands, and to establishing a political platform—allowed people with widely varying ideologies to find points of unity and work together where they might not have otherwise. This was a welcome change to the notorious sectarianism of the American Left. Nonetheless, maintaining a radical character for the movement was a struggle, and we often found ourselves resisting liberal politics within it.

One of the ways this manifested was in tensions over Occupy DC’s relationship with the police. For the first few weeks, before the General Assembly decided to amend it, one of the occupation’s guidelines was “Obey the law.” On many occasions, sometimes through “official” ODC channels, occupiers publicly commended the police for escorting us on marches or for restraining themselves from beating us; once, some occupiers went so far as to propose a “Police Appreciation Day”. This prompted desperately needed conversations, which created opportunities for people from marginalized communities to share personal stories of police brutality. Still, even as the police became increasingly repressive, the question of whether or not they were part of “the 99%” remained contentious.

At least that was a debate, but the movement was also largely and almost unquestioningly dominated by a narrative of American exceptionalism: that ours is a Great Nation that has only recently been “hijacked” by corporations, with appeals to the Constitution or the Founding Fathers rather than universal human rights. American flags sprang up all around McPherson and were proudly waved during marches.  It seemed that most were motivated by a desire to “take our country back” and restore a broken system without asking whether that system worked for all of the 99% to begin with.

Worse yet, it wasn’t uncommon to hear people say straight out that racism had become a secondary problem, a thing of the past, now superseded by economic oppression. These are just a few examples, all of which are inherently privileged perspectives that are completely alienating to people who are still oppressed for their non-dominant identities, for whom economic disenfranchisement is nothing new, who have been terrorized by the police in their own communities, who have been denied citizenship and thus have no country to reclaim, or who are victims of globalization and imperial war. These oppressive narratives endured amid calls for revolution, and most occupiers seemed oblivious to the contradiction.

ON COLLECTIVE LIBERATION AND SAFE(R) SPACES

“If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Lilla Watson

Collective liberation is a fundamental principle of our political practice. It means dismantling hierarchy, resisting oppressive dynamics, and checking privilege so that all marginalized people and their allies can be empowered to work together in shared struggle. We believe collective liberation is essential to radical movement building, so we sought to help implement these principles at McPherson Square, with varying levels of success.

One of the familiar slogans during the early days of our occupation was “Welcome to this liberated park.” At first, it did feel like a liberated space, with spontaneous teach-ins and workshops on anti-oppression, nonviolent resistance, and revolutionary leftist history. However, following repeated incidences of racism, misogyny, and homophobia, it became clear that Occupy D.C. was not a safe space for everyone. To address this problem, the People of Color and White Allies working groups worked together to formulate a statement of grievances and call for solidarity with non-dominant communities. The purpose of this letter was to introduce a critical, intersectional analysis of the systems of oppression that these communities have been fighting against for centuries, long before economic disenfranchisement became a reality for middle-class white Americans.

With collective liberation as our guiding principle, we pushed to build a greater body of politics of solidarity, in direct actions and personal practice. Many of the folks of color banded together to intervene on political projects that they felt did not adequately represent their struggles. There was tremendous personal and political growth of young white people who became solid allies with politics grounded in anti-oppression.

Unfortunately, the politics of solidarity and revolutionary responsibility do not resonate with everyone, and in an open park, it is nearly impossible to guarantee a completely safe space. We realized this early on and focused on creating a safe-as-possible space. The Safe Occupation working group created guidelines on ensuring safety at the park, but there wasn’t any real enforcement of them. We also failed to cultivate a mentality that each person at the park is responsible for their fellow occupiers’ safety; this responsibility did not just lie with De-escalation and Safe Occupation. The Safe Occupation working group took on multiple future incarnations that were more successful in ensuring that the principles of safer spaces were adopted by the entire community.

But for as long as there is a physical occupation with no real semblance of community accountability and a shared moral value system, there will be a litany of serious problems that plague the movement. While some well-intentioned individuals have stepped up to help address these problems, the difficult task of fundamentally shifting the oppressive culture at camp will remain so unless there is a critical mass of helpers.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

In an interview with Naomi Klein, NYC-based organizer Yotam Marom stated, “We’re in a unique moment in the development of a movement that’s not only a protest movement against something but also an attempt to build something in its place. It is potentially a very early version of what I would call a dual-power movement, which is a movement that’s, on the one hand, trying to form the values and institutions that we want to see in a free society, while at the same time creating the space for that world by resisting and dismantling the institutions that keep us from having it.” In D.C., much like in NYC, we are faced with this dualism, but we also have some unique characteristics, as one of the last standing physical occupations and as the nation’s Capitol, that require a nuanced course of action and analysis.

For Occupy D.C., it is important to keep reminding ourselves that physical occupation of a federal park is just a tactic, the effectiveness of which needs to be continually revisited, especially if we intend to build a broad-based movement. At some point, we went from being an encampment around a movement to being a movement around an encampment. How can we refocus and remember our original, radical intent and our politics of solidarity? If this tactic of physically occupying public spaces will be used again in 2012, then we need to ensure that communities in future camps create an echo chamber around intolerance for all oppressive and abusive behaviors.

Winter is here and the spring of our hope is not too far away. This is the time for us to reflect as individuals and as a collective as to what our vision for the radical transformation of society looks like and what tangible steps can be taken to achieve that. This is the time to have the difficult conversations around supporting reform struggles as revolutionaries. This is the time to step back and critically evaluate what our successes and failures have been thus far. This is the time to realize we are in one of the most politically, historically, and demographically vibrant cities in Washington D.C. and we should challenge our collective radical imagination to build people power in communities beyond McPherson Square.

Towards liberation!

Drew Franklin is an activist from D.C. who has been involved in prisoner solidarity work. He was on the Facilitation Team at Occupy DC.

Vasudha Desikan is a DC-based activist who was involved in the Facilitation Team and People of Color Working Group at Occupy DC.

By Pham Binh

The People’s Mic.  Created by occupiers in Liberty Park after the New York Police Department (NYPD) prevented us from using bullhorns, used on Republican Governor Scott Walker and Democratic President Barack Obama, it’s one of the most effective means we’ve devised to give voice to the 99%.

We don’t own media empires or have expensive sound systems, but we will be heard!

However, the powerful people’s mic is not invincible, especially at smaller rallies, protests, flashmobs, and speakouts.

On January 3, the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority’s police force (yes, they have one of their own) arrested two people leading the people’s mic.

Lauren DiGioia (seen above), the hard-working member of the sanitation group and one of the womensexually assaulted at the Liberty encampment, was mobbed by cops, dragged away, and issued a summons as she spoke out against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that allows the government to detain accused terrorists indefinitely without trial. Obama signed NDAA into law, giving Bush’s attacks on civil liberties after 9/11 the “change we can believe in” seal of approval.

This type of action by the cops is going to become common as we continue to make our voices heard. They are adapting their tactics in response to us adapting our tactics. It’s a continual battle between us and them and now it’s our move.

Here’s what we can do to defend the people’s mic:

1. Make sure everyone who is participating has a copy of the message. If one of us gets picked off, we can continue without disruption.

2. Rotate who speaks first on the mic. Occupy is supposed to be leaderless anyway, why not make the people’s mic the same way?

3. Whoever they go after should duck and run while the rest of us bunch up to physically shield them from the long arms of the law.

All of this requires a little more preparation than the average flashmob, but it’s worth it if we can stop our people from being snatched, detained, and summoned for the “crime” of exercising their First Amendment rights.

Pham Binh’s articles have been published by Occupied Wall Street Journal, The Indypendent, Asia Times Online, Znet, and Counterpunch. His other writings can be found at www.planetanarchy.net and soon thenorthstar.info, a collaborative blog by and for occupiers.