Participation at Occupy: a message to insiders & peripherally involved people alike

Inside vs Outside

Yep, just heard it again from someone very involved in Occupy Oakland: the pejorative term "Indoor Activist." It was used to invalidate someone's online argument, the conclusion of which differed from that of many Occupy Oakland organizers. By calling the person (an occasional but steady participant in Occupy Oakland) an "Indoor Activist," the writer effectively stated, "Because you are not one of us occupiers out in the plaza every day, your opinion does not matter." I found it to be an interesting development within a movement designed to be radically inclusive.

I write this from the perspective of someone who believes that radical inclusiveness has been the greatest strength of Occupy and is something we cannot take for granted. Instead we need to fight for it at all times. In the below post I attempt to differentiate Occupy from traditional left-wing activism in the United States based upon this feature, and I do so in light of the clear divisions between insiders who participate on a regular basis and those who do so on an intermittent basis.


Occupy rather than protest

The Occupy movement's modus operandi, to take and hold a public space for the purpose of expressing dissent about elite control of the economy/state/culture (and then building authentic community based upon egalitarian principles in that space), allows many people to connect to fellow dissenters and a greater movement while also constructing barriers that may unintentionally prevent inclusion of all community members as participants of equal value.

Exclusion of some community members is likely inevitable in any social or political movement (no size fits all). The good thing is that many people who have felt excluded from traditional political participation appear energized by Occupy and have taken part in a social movement for the first time in their lives.

An amazing number of people have shared the feeling that such participation felt completely impossible prior to Occupy's advent in the fall of 2011. A generalized sense that a world of possibilities has opened up is one of the most refreshing and shared sensations among Occupy participants worldwide. The range and diversity of participants, particularly in Oakland, has been remarkable, with members of a wide array of ethnic groups, ages, sexual orientations and classes taking part. Even more remarkable, it has also been inclusive of people who have generally refrained from public activism, including members of the lumpen proletariat, newly graduated students, unemployed workers, victims of police brutality, & families facing imminent foreclosure.

Veterans of previous political movements have remarked upon the fact that acceptance of all voices through the General Assembly/consensus process has helped them feel a deeper sense of participation in Occupy than they had in other movements. This is in complete contrast to  traditional left-wing activism which has often been directed by professional activists from within labor, nonprofit , antiwar or environmental groups working on a hierarchical model. Their goal is to get people to their events, to write letters, or to sign petitions so that they can show the larger political elite that their ALREADY DETERMINED  ideas have popular support.  They do not explicitly seek the opinions of  participants.  Their events occur in very prescribed, predictable manners.

People who have been marginalized by current political and economic conditions have resoundingly rejected traditional left-wing activism BECAUSE groups utilize them as pawns for goals which are unclear or which only serve the purposes of strengthening the ability for an organization to continue its ongoing, predetermined work. These organizations are ruled, as a result, by their ability to gather financial contributions, a fact which disables their ability to completely reject current social and economic relationships.  The Occupy movement is, to some degree, a rejection of the institutionalized left's elitist and exploitative approach to activism.

So why don't even more people fucking participate in occupy on a daily basis?

As time goes on, it has become obvious that many sympathetic community members (& polls show a high degree of continued support) have decided not to directly participate in Occupy events, or only do so irregularly. As someone who has participated in many GAs, marches & direct actions, (plus attended some planning meetings and done research used by organizers), but who has never been a member of a committee, nor developed close personal relationships with participants whom I did not already know, I feel I can describe why many who feel closely allied with the Occupy movement do not participate to a greater extent. I believe that most of these are related to two key emotions the state tries to induce in all of us: trauma and fear. They also relate to the challenges of everyday life.

I would also like to examine why I think it matters that those who do participate daily treat occasional participants as equals when discussing strategy and tactics. I believe that this matters because all of us will burn out at some point and may find ourselves going from inside to outside to back inside again.


Trauma

As we all know, violence is endemic in the East Bay, and in our society in general. The Oakland Police Department's use of overwhelming force succeeds in so far as it dissuades  people from participating who cannot endure the thought of such immediate violence. The illegal jailing of hundreds of marchers on January 28th, and their subsequent incarceration under inhumane conditions, was an intentional attempt to scare others from getting involved.

OPD has been clearly attempting (not particularly successfully) to provoke counter-violence from participants by way of targeted arrests, strategic use of chemical weapons, and mass attacks upon entire groups of protesters. Although self-defense against such attacks has been rare, the few exceptions have been exploited by the media to marginalize the movement, thus scaring away some potential participants. What the political elite wants is a generalized association of violence with Occupy (rather than the spectacular violence inflicted upon Scott Olson) because many people find everyday violence scary. I think denying the efficacy of OPD's violent response on January 28th would be unwise.

Furthermore, there are generations of Bay Area activists who have participated in militancy and have experienced the state's  response and many of these people experience post-traumatic stress when they endure police attacks and therefore refrain from participation in events that could trigger police response. I, for one, have experienced some trauma related to police brutality (broken bones, a terminally bad back) & find it difficult to be around police.

Others simply have long endured the street violence provoked by poverty, the state's drug-war and the reproduction of violence and trauma induced by incarceration of a huge percentage of the populace. For many of Oakland's poorest community members, interacting with the police at any level is something to avoid at all costs. Occupy Oakland may not always be perceived as a place where that can occur.

Work

Whereas many community members endure ongoing poverty due to unemployment or low wages, others who are employed face the related issue of pressure to produce at a greater and greater rate. Increases in worker-productivity are related to both computerization of work and managerial systems designed to exploit labor at a faster and faster rate.  Many employed people, and especially, of late, those who work in the public sector, now do work that was once performed by two or more staff members. Others in the private economy are compelled to complete after-hour tasks sans compensation.  Workers are more burned out than ever, and the weakness of unions only supports the ability of capitalists and the state to exploit employees. It might even be valuable to say that such workers face the trauma of everyday life as wage slaves, enduring bosses and clients alike, all for the sake of survival.

Clearly those who work long hours, and also must commute for many hours each week, cannot attend mid-day committees or even regularly attend General Assemblies. Furthermore, their ability to endure long meetings may be compromised if they are office workers compelled to attend these at work each day.

Additionally, we should not be unaware that some people fear that their employers would discover their involvement with the occupy movement and such information could be detrimental to participants' careers. McCarthyist approaches to activism are real experiences for working people. Arrests records could hurt the possibility of some workers' ability to gain employment.

Responsibilities & social conditions

There may be many reasons someone may not be able to regularly participate or imagine participation.  These include care-taking of others, fear of deportation, mental disabilities that prevent them from many kinds of social interactions, fear of homophobia, fear of agism, fear of speaking in public, fear of arrest and so on. Members of Occupy Oakland have done some remarkable work attempting to create inclusive spaces for families, the queer community and women. Whether or not these attempts have been completely successful remains unclear to many. Although not universally the case, elders nationwide have participated to a much lesser extent in Occupy than they have in other activist causes.


How do we relate to each other?

The amount of trauma most people, including even those from privileged backgrounds, face cannot be mitigated in a few months of organizing or creating safe spaces, and, clearly, it is in the best interests of the state to prevent such mitigation by forces of dissent.  The question remains, then, how can Occupy Oakland insiders best relate to those who intellectually support Occupy (and sometimes attend larger events) but have not been involved in ongoing organizing.

I think many organizers resent criticism from those who do not participate regularly. It is certainly easy to be an armchair critic, so it is important that insiders anticipate criticism and provide as much transparency about tactical decisions as possible to the general public.  A great example of this was the work put into a statement by the January 28 Tactical Team, regarding the events of January 28, with descriptions of some the group's plans, decisions made on the fly, and self-criticism of decisions made over the course of the day. After I read this, rather than the resentment I felt at having been put in harm's way for a building we were unlikely to be able to hold, I felt much more compassion for the difficulties of organizing a mass action of this sort.

The truth is that Occupy, like traditional left-wing organizations, remains largely dependent upon irregular participants for numerous things: moral support, financial support, and to act as foot soldiers for events such as the port shutdowns. In my opinion, the success of these can be measured less by the organizer-stated goals than by the degree of participatory inclusion felt by attendees. Obviously this is hard to measure, as there is a lot of subjectivity involved.

It might be best to compare some events that required the inclusion of people who are not insiders. Below are just my opinions on the relative inclusiveness and generalized perception of the events.  Others will certainly differ.

• November 2 General Strike: Decided by over 1,500 people; included numerous planning groups and autonomous acts, including industrial actions, cultural events, militant marches, music, family march, many labor unions supported evening march, and so on. High level of inclusion, although some conflict arose regarding the wisdom of ending the day with an attempted building takeover due to the secrecy involved in that act. Most participants came away with positive feelings about their own involvement but had some lingering questions regarding activities/approaches of others
• December 12 Port Shutdown: voted on in GA by a small quorum. Focused specifically upon port, actions predetermined by leadership, evening GA prematurely ended without participant input into whether or not shutdown should continue, many left early feeling that their participation was not vital
• January 28 Move-in-day: Long planned after failed November building take-over and all understood that it required secrecy for success, but difficult to know who was in charge, much creative participation, including protective barriers and signs intended to protect, high degree of unity of action among participants. Although a failure in regards to stated goals, a high degree of solidarity was built due to the shared experience of tremendous repression by OPD. Some questioning of tactical wisdom remained, ameliorated by statement referred to above

Conclusion (just mine, I know)

We are all responsible for attempting to understand the motives and conditions of others and for sharing our own experiences (in person, on Facebook/twitter/livestream, etc...) Organizers are responsible for as much transparency as is tactically possible and should attempt to utilize and promote tools which provide as much participation as possible. The role of outsider and insider are not static; as people burn out, others will take their place. the slogan, "We are all leaders" means, in affect, we all hold some responsibility for each other. If true, this is serious shit work we have only begun.

Homeland Security Grants at the Rotary Club

In September 2005, I had the opportunity to attend an invite-only event in which an employee of a local suburban San Francisco Bay Area County Sheriff's Department provided an extensive show and tell of anti-riot gear his department had received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It was a spooky and surprising experience and I would like to tell you all about it in light of the military-like attacks upon Occupy movements nationwide, and in light of the current widespread discussions about why and how such a heavy hand has been taken.

Many Occupiers and their supporters have been following the healthy debate between Naomi Wolf of the Guardian UK & Joshua Holland of Alternet regarding the following question: were the crack-downs of Occupy sites centrally coordinated by a federal agency? Or were they, rather, the product of local decisions colored by specific political histories and motives?

Because of my long experience with militant anti-capitalist groups and the police repression they catalyze, I read each of their pieces with fascination. Furthermore, as someone who now works as a professional-level government worker in a local San Francisco Bay Area county, I have had the opportunity to interact with law enforcement agencies, local business and community groups in such a way that has helped me better understand their thinking in regards to political dissent. 

Wolf, in a UK Guardian article, very loosely (sans providing methodological examples) posits that the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Congress as a whole, did, indeed, participate, writing that "members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent." She also posted a piece in her blog which refers to a "municipal police...being pushed around by a shadowy private policing consultancy affiliated with DHS."


Holland's very thorough response to each of these posts in his blog reminds us that we should make conclusions with tangible evidence only, and that Wolf's pieces include none.  He also states, "I don’t find it in the least bit surprising that law enforcement officials communicate with each other, and such communication is in no way an assault on local communities’ autonomy."

As a result, Holland immediately began receiving vitriolic responses in the comments area of his blog. Holland's Twitter followers were treated with half-cogent, often insulting, highlights from these, along with Holland's exclamations of disdain for their inane comments. Fun was had by all.

Wolf responded back to Holland, attempting to provide some evidence. Holland then retorted again, chiding Wolf for her lack of disciplined fieldwork. It gets very inside baseball. Holland concludes with the following:

So, what we're left with, after thousands of words back and forth, is what we began with:

* There are reports that federal law enforcement agencies are offering advice to local law enforcement agencies.

* Some police officials participated in two conference calls set up by PERF, a police think-tank.

* The US Conference of Mayors set up two additional conference calls to discuss various issues surrounding the Occupations.

Now back to my experiences.

I am a Librarian working for a local SF Bay Area county library. In 2005, I worked at one of one of the smaller libraries in the county, one which served a clientele consisting mainly of working class folks and new immigrants. I am remaining anonymous for personal and professional reasons.

Because the county library for which I work serves dozens of independent municipalities, and, despite being a county agency, relies heavily upon supplemental local support for individual branch libraries, a large part of the work of library staff is developing professional relationships with local politicians and community groups in order both to promote library services and to develop possible additional local funding sources.

In my job as a library manager, I did so with vigor, performing a needs assessment by meeting with key informants at schools, cultural groups, nonprofits, municipal agencies, and so on, and developing programs and collections intended to match community needs. I also was encouraged by my supervisor to develop relationships with local business groups and community groups related to local entrepreneurship. In the city (lets call it Santa Carla), I contacted both the Santa Carla Chamber of Commerce and the Santa Carla Rotary Club and was invited to speak at a coming Rotary Club meeting, which I, uneventfully, did. It took place in the basement meeting room of a local Italian restaurant.  Attendees mainly consisted of City Council members, city employees such as the Chief of Police & employees of the local community college and national businesses with branches in the area (including banks and real estate agencies).  Perhaps a third of attendees were Santa Carla residents. Whereas the City's demographics are overwhelmingly Latino & Asian, attendees were overwhelmingly white.

A few weeks later, a member of the Rotary Club called me at the Library and asked if I would like to become a member of the Club, offering to sponsor me, and I said sure. We met and I was invited to attend the next Rotary meeting.

That meeting, also taking place in the same windowless basement room as the previous Rotary Club event, included a speaker from the county for which I worked, but from a different department: the County Sheriff. Intrigued, I sat myself close to the podium, up front.

After we ate an Italian buffet and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the speaker, describing himself as representing the County Sheriff's Homeland Security Office (something I had never heard of), stepped to the podium. He carried, to his side, a large shield, riot helmets & masks, tear gas canisters and other impressive, frighteningly military-like anti-riot gear. He explained that the County Sheriff had received a sizable grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to purchase materials that would allow the Sheriff to protect county residents and businesses against terrorism.

One bit of important background: never, in the history of the County, has their been either a terrorist, threat or  act or even a riot unrelated to terrorist threats.  Protests are far and few between. The main target of protests in the county during the last decade has been an oil firm I will call "Giant Oil." Its corporate headquarters are located in a wealthy area of the County.  Its large refinery is located at the opposite end of the county, in a very poor city with a high unemployment rate.

Protests have targeted Giant Oil from many points of view. Environmental Justice groups have organized poor community members who live near the refinery to demand that the corporation stop buying sympathetic city council members who have given Giant Oil a free ride and have not clamped down on its disregard for public safety in its refinery's regular release of toxic chemicals into the community.  Immediately after the Iraq war began in 2003, militant pacifist groups protested at Giant Oil's corporate headquarters on the other side of the county, and did so via a variety of tactics, including a blockade and chaining of protesters to gates and each other.

Back to the speaker...after explaining each of the pieces of equipment, he asked the group if there were any questions.  I immediately raised my hand.

Usually, when I am in a professional setting, I keep my politics close to my chest, particularly when I am representing the County Library to the community as a whole.  The County pays me to try to promote and provide important services to residents, and I take that job extremely seriously. I try not to do anything which might compromise that responsibility.

Nevertheless, I felt, at that moment, that this was the right time and place to say no, to declare that it is not the role of county government to suppress dissent under the name of anti-terrorism. I justified it by thinking that the role of libraries is to promote intellectual freedom and, as a county employee, I am compelled to protect the Constitution of the United States, including the right to peacefully assemble and voice grievances. Furthermore, because I have been the target of police violence in numerous protests (with a broken finger from one incident, stitches and scars from another, a chronic bad back from another, and countless bruises which now show no scars), I am particularly sensitive to justifications for violence against protest.

The speaker pointed to me, and I said, "I understand that the Department of Homeland Security was developed as a response to some Saudis who hijacked planes & crashed them into the World Trade Center.  I don't understand how this gear will protect us against that kind of attack. Under what anti-terrorist conditions will this equipment be used?"

The speaker immediately mentioned that Giant Oil had been subjected to a good number of militant protests over the years.  This struck home.  Was he explicitly connecting the County's Homeland Security grant request and anti-terrorism methods to the protection of local corporations against protest? Furthermore, because many of my closest friends were involved in those protests, was he implying that they were a threat to both local and national security from these peaceful protesters with whom I had shared many a hike, beer or protest?

I countered, "There is a long tradition of acts of peaceful civil disobedience in this country, from the civil rights movement through anti-war protests such as the recent protests at Giant Oil. They are unrelated to Al Qaeda or other violent groups. They use peaceful, often symbolic means to participate in politics."

An uproar ensued.  I could hear a couple of loud voices behind me trying to shut me up. Looking behind me, I could see that it was the  Santa Carla Chief of Police & one of his employees. The Chief said, "What if those protesters got into the Giant Oil offices and stole everyone's credit card numbers? That would definitely be a huge threat to public safety." Some members gave other reasons for the importance of having the riot gear on hand, but, by this time, my adrenaline had risen precipitously due to fear that I had seriously fucked up my relationship with the City, and I don't recall what others said. Most attendees appeared shocked and embarrassed that this kind of discussion was happening here, especially as the result of a probationary member's question, and so the Q&A period quickly ended short.

Both proud of myself for having dissented to both the conflation of protesters with terrorists plus the normalization of police violence against such people, but also ashamed that the context was a workplace one which might be construed as inappropriate, I simply felt dazed & displaced.  A few Rotary members came to me afterwards and explained that they agreed with me, which both surprised me and felt good. Nevertheless, I never attended another rotary club meeting and no members contacted me again asking me to do so, and I felt bad about that.

I have been left, over the years, with numerous lingering questions, and these have been brought up by the current attack upon protesters using the kind of equipment made available by Homeland Security Grants to local law enforcement (notice the lack of detail regarding who received grants in 2004 & 2005 and what they paid for).

• What justification did requesting agencies provide when requesting the gear? The State of California has a Law called the California Public Records Act (here's a guide), which requires that local governments provide, upon request, such info. Because I work for the county in question, I do not feel comfortable doing so).  Others should.
• Did, in those justifications, the local agency justify monies to protect corporate offices rather than protect against actual terrorism?  Is that legal?
• Did the acceptance of such grants include an agreement to assess the efficacy of what those monies were spent upon? If so, would this not compel local agencies to actually use the anti-riot gear in order to satisfy that agreement?
• Did the acceptance of monies include or require an agreement to participate in any regional planning for the repression of otherwise constitutionally protected political activity?

In order to help understand the nature of the nationwide crack-down on protest, information about these grants from six to eight years ago may be helpful, and I encourage others to take on this work. Both Holland and Wolf have engaged in healthy discussion about this issue that should lead us to attempting to utilize greater oversight of local police and sheriff office practices and we are lucky that some tools do exist to help us do so.