Political Education–Occupy Wall Street’s First Year

While Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is easily identified with direct action in the streets, equal recognition should be given to the vast amount of political education that took place. This article will give an overview of that and briefly assess its emphases and absences.


While Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is easily identified with direct action in the streets, equal recognition should be given to the vast amount of political education that took place.
The very few historical presentations dealt with precursors to OWS such as the general strike and the history of May Day.Eventually an interest in environmental issues developed with programs on sustainability, coal, fracking, nuclear power, mountain top removal, permaculture, eco-socialism, food justice, tar sands, the Spectra pipeline, alternative energy, green jobs, a green economy, and the relationship of capitalism and ecology.Specific concerns of the 99% were examined: health care, the hospital crisis, housing, foreclosures, media justice, public education, The City University of New York (CUNY), the education bubble.Some programs treated international issues: South Korea, Egypt, Tunisia, Papua New Guinea, Panama, Palestine, Guatemala, El Salvador, Greece, Yemen, Bahrain, Nicaragua, the Middle East, North Africa, and Columbia as well as migration, colonial trade, and deconstructing empire.
Frequent activist training took place.There were sessions on grassroots organizing, nonviolent direct action as well as in skills such as de-escalation, facilitation, crowd funding, making media, surviving disasters, live streaming and net technology, including Word press, creating newsletters and mailing lists, and social media.People also learned medical techniques: first aid, herbal remedies, holistic body care, and alternative medicine, as well as growing sprouts, preparing for evacuation, bartering, pedal power, and drawing.Some workshops focused on personal matters: sexuality (belly dancing, alternatives to monogamy), spirituality (meditation), and overdose prevention.Culture was a matter for some, but not much, analysis on politics and art, dealing with museums, community radio, theater of the oppressed, and the politics of hip hop and workshops on music, art, screen printing, fiber arts, knitting, and revolutionary games.drawing, "occupied algebra" and "radical recess" all day.The day was so successful that the Free University was repeated and extended to four days in September 2012 with too many topics to list here.In addition, a substantial amount of internal education took place within working groups.It is impossible to calculate all the knowledge shared in the unceasing conversations that took place, first in Liberty Plaza, then in many other venues.

Much of my own development was provoked by the strategic issues raised initially by Students for a Democratic Society as it wrestled with the historical gaps, political backwardness, and anticommunism we had inherited from
McCarthyism.
In assessing this array of events I am conscious of its contrasts with my own political education back in the 60s and 70s.In that era many of us were just discovering the poverty of The Other America, the brutality of Jim Crow segregation, the nature of class society, and the complex and subtle processes through which women were rendered second-class citizens.Most of my learning came in what we called "the shadow university" at the University of Wisconsin: speakers, self-taught study groups on labor history, literature and politics, imperialism, etc., polemics and conversations on the left, especially in Students for a Democratic Society, the consciousness-raising groups in the early stages of the feminist movement and later study groups of a Marxist collective.
In contrast, through its understanding of the role of the ruling class, the 1%, and labor as central to the 99%, Occupy started at a higher level of analysis and quickly developed sophistication in the main areas indicated above.However, what was not studied is as interesting as what was.Whereas the interests of Vietnam-era activists were impelled by war and imperialism, OWS, despite its location in an international movement precipitated by situations in North Africa and the Middle East, kept its eyes steadily fixed on the domestic crisis.Although the United States was still at war, and there was an Antiwar Working Group, there was almost no discussion of Iraq or Afghanistan, war or militarism, except for two sessions on the arms trade and the narco-military state.It was quite a while before a Global Justice Working Group began to hold anti-imperialist programs.
Women's issues were also strangely neglected except for a few talks on women in the Philippines, Iran, and Palestine.A few programs treated gender binary, gender and sexuality, and queers and economic justice, but almost nothing on feminist ideas or the feminist movement except one discussion of horizontalism and feminism, and one on challenging male supremacy.Much of my own development was provoked by the strategic issues raised initially by Students for a Democratic Society as it wrestled with the historical gaps, political backwardness, and anti-communism we had inherited from McCarthyism.We struggled to figure out what kind of a movement was necessary to transcend the conservatism of the U.S. working class, and our campusbased movement's estrangement from it.Eventually our anticommunist legacy was challenged which led to serious study of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, revolutionary theory, and the history of the left.
In contrast, Occupy undertook precious little exploration of political theory (except one study group on anarchism), the history of political movements, or the strategic questions arising from them, except for discussions on "Mistakes Movements Make" and "How Movements Get Undermined."The ideological crisis provoked by the fall of Russian and Chinese communism and the global dissolution of communist parties meant there was little interest in socialism, the USSR, China or Cuba, guerilla movements, radical political parties, or Marxism (although some Marxist ideas underlay parts of the more analytical symposium on the commons).
One reason for the poverty of theoretical, historical, and strategic study and debate is the dominant role initially played by a group of anarchists who brought certain principles to OWS, partly from European movements: an emphasis on horizontalism, autonomy, consensus, utopian ideas of prefiguration, diversity of tactics, and the concomitant rejection of socialism and Marxism.These anarchists claimed ownership of OWS although Marxists, like myself, were also involved in its founding.Promoting their viewpoint in Tidal, the OWS theoretical journal, and dominating the discourse of assemblies, they often tended to treat these political principles as beyond debate or even discussion.Also repudiating any strategy directed at the government, anarchists eschewed reform demands to be met through legislation.That plus a blanket dismissal of all forms of electoral activity, party organization, and socialism rendered most previous radical history irrelevant.For various reasons, instead of debating these assumptions, Marxists allowed this suppression throughout year one by holding their disagreements in abeyance primarily for the sake of unity in a dynamic, but still unsolidified, movement.Consequently, as in the 50s this self-censorship enabled a new form of anticommunism to prevail unchallenged.While this spared Occupy the sectarianism that often plagued earlier movements, it also produced an evasion of strategic questions and an inability to learn anything from the past.
At the same time, anarchists' emphasis on autonomous political and economic self-organization resulted in the advocacy and discussion of strategies of "solidarity economics," including cooperatives, squatting, bartering, debt refusal, and alternative economies and currencies without much critical analysis or study of their history or viability.For example, the forum on the commons, which discussed such strategies, did not discuss socialism.The espousal of self-reliance and mutual aid, as opposed to government services, led to trainings ranging from growing sprouts and using pedal power for energy to bartering and re-organizing birth and baby care.Given the rejection of campaigns to influence legislation, and other strategies, the primary tactic remaining was to go into the streets and denounce the system, hence the continual training in the tactics of direct action.
However, as OWS moves into its second year, new political tendencies are evolving within it which seek to face and understand its strategic shortcomings, such as its lack of racial and class diversity, and the relation of that to its refusal to organize around the concrete reforms workers and the poor so desperately need.New emphases in education are bound to result.

Given the rejection of campaigns to influence legislation, and other strategies, the primary tactic remaining was to go into the streets and denounce the system, hence the continual training in the tactics of direct action.
Participatory Political Education-Occupy Wall Street's First Year by Jackie DiSalvo FREE UNIVERSITY, SEPTEMBER 18-22, NEW YORK CITY.PHOTO BY LEONARD VOGT Em and Ed = Empowerment & Education; POC = People of Color Caucus); (…) = Working Groups Repeated Trainings: Direct Democracy, Facilitation, Direct Action, Legal Rights, Non-Violent Communication, Anti-Repression, Speaking About OWS, De-Escalation (Security), Non-Violence, Medical, Information Technology Livestreaming, Using Social Media, Word Press (Tech Ops) OCTOBER Behind the Wall: Crises, Regulations and Derivatives Occupy Walmart: Walmart Workers Demand Respect Debt, Enslavement & Capital Punishment, Sylvia Federici History of Radicalism: Reclaiming the American Revolution Bailouts and the American Casino Film The True Cost of Coal (Environmental Solidarity) on Healthcare (Healthcare for the 99%) what they had learned at various corporate targets.Moreover, there were at least four one-to-three day conferences.A two-day Forum on the Commons examined everything from theories on the loss and creation of the commons to struggles over ownership of water, seeds, health care, education; from art and copyright to public goods, alternative energy, solidarity economics, eco-socialism, alternative banking, alternative economies and the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development.A Making Worlds Collective continues to pursue the theme of sustainability.In another two-day teach-in on "Winning the Crisis" academics, activists, artists, and organizers talked about debt, cultural paradigms, and movement building from Occupy to Venezuela.A three-day conference brought together representatives of OWS with members of the Union of Radical Political Economists.On May Day a remarkable Free University took over Madison Square Park for ninety inspiring classes with such notable academics as David Harvey, Francis Fox Piven, Wayne Koestenbaum, Andrew Ross, Ann Snitow, and David Graeber, as well as poetry and play readings, poetry and protest song writing, workshops in ESL, debate skills, radical figure Beyond single programs, Occupy University planned whole courses: Radical Economics 101, debt, radical pedagogy, and labor.The Direct Action group taught street tactics in a weekly Summer Disobedience School in which W http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.eduNo. 96 (Spring 2013) DOI 10.5195/rt.2013.18people immediately practiced Exploitation and the Politics of Crisis, Aaron Major, Soc., U of Albany, SUNY Hip Hop & Social Change, Sujatha Fernandes, Soc., Queens Col & GC, & Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (Em & ED) Training, People's News Wire and How to Use NYCGA.net! (Tech Ops) The Occupation of Wall Street, Discussion with Raymond Lotta and Andy Zee Legacy of the Triangle Fire, Then and NOW (Em & Ed) Making Media, Building Our Movement, Una, Ora, & Shreya Media Educators & Allied Media Conference Radical Politics, U. S. Imperialism and Youth Activism in El Salvador, Margarito Nolasco, National Youth Secretary FMLN, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) (Em & Ed) Predatory Lending in Multifamily Homes, Tenant Organizers, Urban Homesteading Board, The U.S. Occupying Movement & the Movement in Other Countries, David Kaupf (Em & Ed) Eco-socialism, Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, founder Eco-socialist Horizons (Em & Ed) Voices Against Social Injustice: Troy Davis, Rosa Clemente, Green Party, NYU, Troy Davis Collective Racial Micro-Aggression: How Little Things Add Up (POC) "Books Not Bars," Film, Prison Industrial Complex, NYU Center For Multi-cultural Education Beyond the Gender Binary, LGBTQ & the Anarchist College.FREE UNIVERSITY, SEPTEMBER 18-22 FRANCES FOX PIVEN TEACHING PHOTO BY LEONARD VOGT http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.eduNo. 96 (Spring 2013) DOI 10.5195/rt.2013.18http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.eduNo. 96 (Spring 2013) DOI 10.5195/rt.2013.18