Jayel Aheram

The Chaparral Editorial – Nov. 21, 2011

An Occupy Wall Street protestor is grabbed by police as he tries to escape a scuffle in Zuccotti Park, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, in New York. Two days after the encampment that sparked the global Occupy movement was cleared by authorities, demonstrators marched through the financial district and promised mass gatherings in other cities. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

On Nov. 17, protesters of the global “Occupy” movement marked the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protests with marches, rallies, and various mass actions. They were protesting many things: corporate greed and its influence in our political discourse, a two-tiered justice system that favors the very rich and the very powerful, the massive bank bailouts funded by hard-working Americans, and the burdensome debt and chronic joblessness afflicting many Americans – the so-called “99 percent.” Yet in cities all across the United States, these expressions of the very American right to free speech and peaceful assembly were greeted with violence at the hands of local governments.

When one reads or watches news reports about these protests, one might think that these protests regularly devolve into a violent free-for-all that justifies or even necessitates the brutal police actions inevitable follow. “Objective” and “neutral” journalists of the corporate media too often describe these confrontations between police and protesters as “clashes,” as if the protesters are the aggressors. In truth, the violence in these so-called “clashes” are initiated by just one side: the police. In the confrontation between unarmed protesters and heavily armed and armored police, it is the police that are the aggressors and the peaceful protesters the victims. There is not an asymmetry in violence, but just violence inflicted by the State and its police.

It is understandable then why politicians and their police would react this way. The movement is a rejection of, and thus threat to, their model of society and governance. It is a dissent against the inherently violent and coercive State.

Consensus, not mandates

Despite the crackdowns, the arrests, the brutality, the Occupy movement has, for the most part, adhered to their oft-stated principle of non-violence. In their rhetoric and actions, the overwhelming majority of the protesters have been peaceful and non-violent. In their general assemblies, occupiers have adopted a decision-making process based on consensus, striving to reach near, if not outright unanimity in their decisions. The movement is leaderless, rejecting representatives to speak on their behalf. The occupiers choosing instead to represent themselves as individuals and choosing to add their many voices in this growing movement. What the occupations lack in hierarchy, they make up for in direct democracy.

Conservatives and libertarians with a desire for limited government will find their perfect government in the occupiers’ system of governance: the General Asssembly. The General Assembly, or the GA, is an open, participatory, and horizontally organized (as opposed to the traditionally vertical, or top-down, form of organization) in which every participating member has an equal voice and opportunity to affect the decision of the group. Participation in the decision-making process and direct actions are encouraged, rather than coerced. The GA is not compulsory and its directives are backed not by laws or the threat of punishment, but by voluntary association and individual action. Problems are identified by consensus and solved by the voluntary actions of its members. The GA and its direct actions are funded by charity and not by taxes, and while some in the movement profess dislike for free market principles, they are already participating in it.

It might be a surprise to the most hardcore and militant Socialists and Communists in the movement that they are participating in a grand libertarian experiment. At its core, the Occupy movement is an experiment in a voluntaryist model of society devoid of state violence and coercion. This is not mere political disobedience, but a dissension from the violent and coercive State. Whether it stays that is another matter entirely.

What have the occupiers wrought? A voluntaryist society, if they can keep it.

This editorial appears in the Nov. 21 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.

The Chaparral Editorial – Oct. 17, 2011

On Sept. 17, a group of protesters gathered in New York City in a protest of corporatism and the failed policies of this government. They called themselves “Occupy Wall Street” and they did occupy. The protests persisted and despite the corporate media blackout, the word of their “occupation” spread. Organizing themselves through social media networks, like Twitter and Facebook, support and the sympathy for the protesters grew. A month later, the protest that became an occupation became a movement that spread throughout the United States.

In more than 1000 cities all across the nation, protests inspired by “Occupy Wall Street” have sprung up. For the most part, the participants of these protests come from a very diverse cross-section of America. This diversity in turn is translated in the multiple “demands” articulated in New York City protesters’ first declaration and gives fuel to their critics’ charge that the protests lack clear objective.

This charge is unfair. In “Occupy Los Angeles” and “Occupy D.C.” in the nation’s capital, conservatives and libertarians freely mingle with socialists and environmentalists. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor called these protests ”an awesome, harmonic convergence of ultra-left and libertarian right.” While there are multiple demands declared in these protests, the one issue uniting the protesters is the acknowledgement that there is something fundamentally flawed in the current corporatist-controlled, two-party system. So, it is surprising then that the Democratic Party is attempting to co-opt the movement.

In fact, the Democratic Party is seeking to divide the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and turn it into an extension of the Obama 2012 presidential campaign. According to ABC News, “consensus is emerging among Democrats that the ‘Occupy’ movement is worth tapping into, even helping along and joining with in some instances.”

If the Democratic Party succeeds, the “99 percent” will become the 33.7 percent (the percentage of self-identified Democrats according to Rasmussen Reports, Oct. 2, 2011). This could prove devastating for the nascent protest movement and the chance for real social transformation would once again be lost. This is the artificial left-right divide that the corporate media, the Republicans, and the Democrats are trying very, very hard to maintain. After all, the 99 percent are protesting the policies beguay a right-wing president and continued by a left-wing president. We the people in the 99 percent are protesting the status quo, not demanding more of it.

The current status quo the Democratic Party seeks to maintain can be defined by the actions of their figurehead in the past weeks. President Barack Obama in the past few weeks has assassinated an American without due process, created a secret panel that authorizes assassination of Americans, authorized a new crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in clear conflict of state laws, and news has come out that under his administration that the Department of Homeland Security has created a terrifying “pre-crime” detection program that is currently being tested on American citizens. Let us not forget that in the three years Obama has been in office, he has tripled the use of Predator drones, tripled the American deaths in Afghanistan, and started another war in Libya.

We must remember that Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, are all part of the 1 percent that are responsible for the failed policies that is crippling this country.

There is a reason why Cantor is rejecting the movement and why Pelosi seems to be supporting it: this ensures that this movement will never become a force to threaten their parties. Their support or rejection of support is an attempt to divide, make no mistake. The maintenance of the current status is their sole purpose and goal.

Defy, resist, dissent! That is all we can do in the face of all of these attempts to co-opt and destroy this movement. Together, we must dissent.

This editorial appears in the Oct. 17 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.