One year ago, a small group of activists sat down in an out-of-the-way little park in downtown Manhattan. And then they refused to leave. By the time they were forcibly evicted from Zuccotti Park one month and 29 days later, the Occupy Wall Street movement had changed the national conversation and spawned dozens of affiliated groups around the country. On September 17, an unknown number of activists will converge on downtown Manhattan to mark the one-year anniversary of the movement.
So where have they been over the last year? What have they been doing? What are their plans for the future? In this month's issue of Huffington, Saki Knafo answers those questions and many more, as he takes us inside what's left of the movement. Even before Occupy was unmoored from its physical home base, writes Saki, it had already split into two very different factions: the college-educated "middle class idealists," and the "inveterate social outcasts." While in the park the two groups formed a mutually beneficial though uneasy coexistence, one they saw as "a testament to the movement's unifying power and as an essential attribute of an ideal society." But once they were evicted from Zuccotti Park, the two groups went their separate ways and now "barely communicate with each other."
Saki visits both sides of the movement, and introduces us to those still carrying the flame. At its peak, estimates Professor Todd Gitlin, a former SDS leader, the movement had around 50,000 followers, and had the attention of hundreds of thousands more. But many of those once excited by Occupy's potential are now, as Gitlin says, "politically unemployed."
To be sure, there are plenty of affiliated groups around the country tackling important issues. In Minneapolis and other cities, for instance, groups are "occupying" foreclosed homes and fighting back -- sometimes successfully -- against the banks. In Vermont, Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's, is pushing an amendment to ban "money in politics." In Brooklyn, activists are "liberating" abandoned properties.
But as the one-year anniversary approaches, can the spirit that once had the attention of the entire nation be rekindled? Saki finds members of the college-educated faction in a midtown Manhattan office, laying plans for what they say are "big things." On the other side, he spends a few nights with the group of die-hards still sleeping on a sidewalk outside Trinity Church in lower Manhattan.
"The two classes of Occupy movement, meanwhile, have come to resemble two much larger segments of American society," writes Saki. "The people on the street are increasingly like street people everywhere. And the people in the offices are increasingly like traditional left-wing activists."
But it was only a year ago that a small, determined collection of idealists changed the focus of the national discourse from austerity to inequality and introduced terms like 99 percent into the vocabulary. They may not have had much of a physical presence at the recent conventions, but their principles were there.
In Zuccotti Park, "we were trying to build a different kind of culture," says Max Bean, a tutor who spent much time there a year ago. "It was a dysfunctional community, it was a f***ing mess, but I think that was a worthwhile and interesting goal."
This piece appears in Issue 14 of our FREE new weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store.
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Maybe somewhere that they are not being a public nusance!!
One can only hope that group of useless trash stays away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuccotti_Park
If OWS thinks it can accomplish things without effecting elections,they are MISTAKEN.
Maybe Occupiers will have some candidate to put forth or to support in the midterms but,meanwhile, Nov 6 is #1 priority for those of us dealing with reality.
So glad to read your comment. Since U are small biz can i ask you this question:
WOULD it not be better
if our GOV did like most other governments in the world GIVE HEALTH INSURANCE to ALL PEOPLE , so that SMALL BIZ and BIG BIZ like GM do not have the BURDEN of paying for HC for their EMPLOYEES making them more competitive and ABLE to hire people without worrying about the COSTs of H insurance????
Please reply , thanks
Everyone always asks, "do you want some government bureaucrat deciding if you get covered or not?" The simple response I say is "as opposed to some for profit insurance company manager concerned with bottom lines and profits and looking good for his firms executives - YOU BET!
7. Even if the Occupy movement had of failed to get lawmakers to pass the act, it would be hard for them to resist forever. And once it finally was passed Occupy would get a lot of the credit, which would have boosted their reputation and turned them into a force to be reckoned with.
8. The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 would have been a good tool for citizens of other nations. The Occupy movement didn't consider that or seem to even care about their struggles very much.
9. The indecisiveness made people tune out. It was like advertising a play and getting the audience to show up then standing on the stage debating about how the play should be performed. Eventually the audience got bored and went home. In that sense the Occupy movement was a lot of bluster and no follow through.
YOU are so correct.
They should have focused also on the Prez AMERICAN JOBS Act and that would have been so so GREAT achievement.
LACK of FOCUS on election and helping progressive win agaisnt all the SUPER PAC money REGISTRATING people to VOTE
Protesting against the VOTER SUPPRESSION
etc etc.......NOV 6 Election
Faved
I was inspired by the fact that the Occupy movement went global. But I think the Occupy movement dropped the ball. I think their biggest mistake was to decide not to make the Electoral reform Act of 2012 one of their demands. That had a real shot at making a difference, in the following ways:
1. It would have given focus to the movement.
2. It would have put pressure on lawmakers that they would have found hard to resist.
3. It would have inspired the general population and given them hope that real change was not only possible but imminent.
4. If passed, the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 would be a step toward eliminating corruption in government.
5. If they had made the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 one of their demands it would have been like an advertisement for the act. It would have raised public awareness about it.
6. Even if the Occupy movement hadn't gotten lawmakers to pass the act, it would have been in the public awareness from that point on, and *the people* may have been able to get lawmakers to pass it by now.
Crisdean YOU could have emailed them OWS should have a site and phone
i think
www.the99%Declaration,com
or GOOGLE it
In the end I think all the Occupy movement really accomplished was raising awareness about the widening gap between the upper 1% and the lower 99%. That's a good thing, and I think it's had an effect on the Romney campaign, but they could have accomplished so much more if they hadn't been so indecisive and politically naive.
I blame all of this on the early leaders of the movement. They made it clear that they felt that being boxed into specific demands might backfire. If the demands weren't met they were afraid it would make the movement look ineffectual. They had other reservations as well, but I've forgotten what they were. But those were the seeds of failure for the movement. The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 was a demand that was taylor made for the Occupy movement. But they couldn't see it. Eventually the movement ran out of steam.
Elinor, you should be ashamed but you won't be. You will live, consume and eventually die without contributing a single thing to humanity, forgotten in the dust that we all become.
Hey...here's a fab idea: YOU start a company and hire some bed bug ridden, Gender Studies "person", that spent the last year in the last OWS tent in your downtown. Hire them first, as a Diversity Coordinator...do this before you hire anybody that actually produces your make believe product.
Make sure you start them at $90,000, with generous benefits.
The best thing for them to do, is to get candidates for congress started to run for office
in 2014 and2016!
They must weed out the TEA BAGGERS among them!
The rest of their actions will not do any good this election