Clear Thinking: Questions on the Occupy Protests

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests and the Occupy protests around the globe have sharply expressed the ability of the ruling class to attack citizens with barely any visible public outrage and the crucial role of ideology in creating social change.  When AdBusters initiated the protest, hardly anyone expected that it would have a worldwide impact, and this worldwide effect has been seen as the real mystery surrounding the protests.  Apparently, it is supposed to be surprising that the majority of people in the world are upset at wealth inequality and corporate control of "democratic" governments.  I think this is the exact opposite of what is truly surprising about OWS.  It is very clear that the shocking surprise should be that OWS has spread worldwide,causing massive upheaval and resulting in violent police repression, and yet it can still have such a small impact on how the political machine moves forward.

In the United States, OWS and its sister protests have especially illustrated this fact.  Recently, when the Occupy Oakland protest (which had up until that point remained overwhelmingly peaceful) was firebombed, tear gassed, flash grenaded, and 400 legal protesters were arrested the major media barely flinched. [1]  The protest even involved an altercation within City Hall, and yet the leading stories were Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney battling over the Republican Presidential nomination.  The same thing happened when Occupy Oakland had shut down the United States' fifth busiest port on November 2nd of 2011, there is a massive protest centered on class issues and the media won't even touch it. [2]


Repression in the Park

One possible reason why the events haven't had the expected impact is the government suppression of journalists covering the story.  It seems a bit conspiratorial, but the evidence is fairly obvious.  Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group for journalistic freedom, dropped the ranking of the United States' freedom of the press some 27 places specifically for the repeated arrests of journalists for covering the OWS protests. [3]  Even high profile US journalist groups have condemned police across the country for arresting (in some cases violently) journalists who presented valid press credentials at the time of the arrest. [4]  During the infamous nightly raids on the peaceful Occupy encampments, police routinely barricaded the parks to block journalists from covering the evictions. [5]

To be fair, the movement as a whole was well reported, the evictions were reported, and (less surprisingly, given the victims) the violent repression of affluent students at UC Davis.  All of that being said, the government went uncharacteristically out of its way to obstruct journalists reporting on the protests and the way the police handled them.

For its citizens, it is hard to deny that the United States provides a lot of political freedom, yet when the protest is focused around class issues the government breaks character and represses freedom of the press and of assembly.  It is tempting to compare the government crackdown of the Occupy protests with its tolerance of the Tea Party protests, but this is unfair.  The Tea Party protests were not long term encampments.  Nevertheless, it is clear that the government went out of its way to obscure reporting on the subject, and yet there was nothing close to a media blackout.  There were cover ups and bitter violence, but people still heard about it.

So yes people (kind of) heard about it, to a certain extent they even heard about the police brutality, and yet where is the support for the OWS and the outrage at the government?  Where is the real world change brought about by the protests?


Moving (Even More) Forward

Near the beginning of the phenomenon, Gallup conducted a poll finding that 63% of US citizens did not know enough about the OWS protests to have an opinion. [6]  While the poll has not been repeated since, one wonders how much that number has honestly changed.  While familiarity has increased since October, has the understanding of what "we are the 99%" means and what the Occupy movement really wants increased at all?  Has it increased in the Occupy movement itself?

I think this is the crucial thing:  the impact is softened because it is dispersed.  There is room for disagreement, but the disunity in the OWS message is its problem and it comes, clearly, from the Left's distaste for "ideology" after the miserable end of the Soviet Union.

Enough with that.

No group of people large enough to make a meaningful change will agree on every issue, but if you agree on enough issues, you have to make that the overriding focal point.  Karl Marx would say that class is the crux of all social injustice, and that is essentially the meaning of the phrase "we are the 99%" is it not?  It is speaking to the universality of class above all other differences and that there is one minority class (the 1%) that is leeching off of a productive one (the 99%).

This is Marxist!

Has the Left really gained anything by abandoning the term Marxism and reducing itself to complaining about the effects of capitalism, rather than putting forth it's alternative?  Obviously, the disasters of the failed state-capitalist "Leninist" countries of the 20th century do not need to be repeated, but it hardly follows that, therefore, the dire results of late capitalism should not be met with clear ideas that make sense and that work.

What the Left must do is take back Marxism and refute at every chance the absurd notion that the Soviet Union was a worker's democracy or that the United States can't be.

It is time that we Occupy Marxism!

Notes and Bibliography:

1.  "Occupy Oakland: Over 400 Arrested as Police Fire Tear Gas, Flash Grenades at Protesters" Democracy Now!: accessed Feb. 2nd, 2011. [Here]
2.  "US Occupy protesters clash with police at Oakland port" BBC: accessed Feb. 2nd, 2011. [Here]
3.  "Press Freedom Index 2011" Reporters Without Borders: accessed Feb. 2nd, 2011. [Here]
4.  "SPJ condemns arrest of journalists at Occupy protests," last modified Nov. 11, 2011. [Here]
5.  "The NYPD Didn't Want You to See Occupy Wall Street Get Evicted" last modified Nov. 15, 2011. [Here]
6.  "Most Americans Uncertain About 'Occupy Wall Street' Goals" last modified Oct. 18, 2011. [Here]