I’m going to guess is that part of it was left wing people are less likely to fall in line with the group than right wing authoritarians.
Was part of a qualitative research study put on by a university and related to a local chapter of the Occupy movement.
My thoughts on 2 reasons why the larger movement died:
- No unified list of attainable objectives.
- The physical persecution ended.
While no one in the movement disagreed with the main tenants that the group stood for, when Wall Street came calling to know what the Occupy movement wanted, the distributed leadership model made it hard to form a coherent list that went beyond “overturn Citizens United”. It really was a leaderless movement for awhile there, and that has downsides.
Regarding the physical persecution, I first got interested in the movement because of the news coverage I was seeing from independent channels. US citizens were being beaten, gassed, and corralled in a way that infringed on civil rights and usually without incitement (Occupy was vehemently non-violent). Once those acts of injustice started to fade, I think people lost some of their zeal.
It was a wild time, though, and I’d be happy to talk about it further. From limited news coverage by US MSM, to folks coordinating carpools to NYC and DC, not to mention the unique style of communication at rallies to get around the ban of sound amplification by police… a lot happened.
What’s this about the unique communication style?
At the Occupy meetings, there were no defined leaders, which meant everyone’s voice equally deserved to be heard. As such, people who wanted to speak would generally queue up and then be given a few minutes to address the crowd (which was sometimes in the thousands).
Since PA systems and megaphones were prohibited by police early on (and would often be used as an excuse by police to break up a gathering), Occupy Wall Street gatherings began using the “human microphone” method of making sure speakers were heard.
In short, a speaker’s words would be repeated back by the crowd so that the words of the speaker would project back further in the crowd. With thousands at a gathering, it often took 2-3 waves of repeating the speaker’s words until they reached the back of the group.
If you stood at the right spot, you could kind of hear the sound “roll” back over the crowd. It was a strange feeling of unity to know that everyone at the gathering was truly understanding the speaker, because they weren’t just hearing what was said, but were echoing it back to others.
Here’s a wiki page that talks a bit more about the technique: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone
I also remember that the OWS movement had made up some hand gestures which could be used for holding votes among large crowds during their meetings. I can’t recall what they were exactly, but I remember that gaining consensus was important to the group and anyone in the crowd could hold up a “veto” hand signal and be given the ability to address the crowd about why they disagreed.
I was impressed by the creativity of it all.
No unified objective is why we on the left tend to lose.
The most potent spiritual successor I’ve seen is the whole GameStop thing: an attempt to exploit a recursively over-leveraged predatory derivative scheme. Over-leveraged derivatives are the characteristic underpinning of most of the Wall Street fuckery that the Occupy movement was fighting.
I don’t have any particular love for the company, but it’s impossible to overlook the similarity. If I was going to hit Wall Street where it hurts, I’d pile onto an exploit like that. The more people on board, the better.
Oh shut up with GameStop. Not trying to be rude but how can you bring it up without mentioning the ways that the “protesters” helped the very same hedge fund managers get a fat payday? Or how notorious anti-capitalist Elon Musk supported it? Come on man wake up.
Then again OWS was a joke so I guess that absolute joke of a protest would make a fitting successor.
Because it got co-opted and no because it’s gonna get co-opted. It’s too vague yet appealing.
You can’t build a revolution on top of slogans, they lacked unified ideology and goals. without palpable goals you can’t achieve anything
They actually had goals, some of which were achieved via the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. But that wasn’t enough, and then it was repealed during the Trump era.
No, they were disbanded (at night, by force, with cameras off) because they were becoming too much of a problem for the ownership class, who was not willing to fix what caused the subprime mortgage crisis and was not willing to let too-big-to-fail companies collapse which they should have, according to common capitalist ideology.
Fear of the risk of collapse is supposed to encourage hedge funds to be cautious, and the bail-outs showed they don’t need to fear, because the US government is in their pocket and will bail them out with taxpayer money. As things currently are, hedge funds can use other people’s money to get rich, and when they fuck up and lose everything, the taxpayers take the hit instead. This is still the case, and at smaller scales is still a very common grift on Wall Street. (This is what Romney did before he went into politics, and how Toys-R-Us died.) We’re looking at a number of markets that are now at risk of suffering the same kind of short-sell blowout leading to a market collapse which will tank the economy. Again.
The grievances Occupy explicitly expressed to their elected representatives were never addressed, and confidence in the US economy and the US government (in doing its job serving the public and not corporate or plutocratic interests) has suffered, leading to the election of trump and the rise of fascist movements such as the transnational white power movement and the closely-aligned Christian nationalist movement. Without big money fueling the propaganda machines that keep these movements alive, discontent would turn against the ownership class, who would tremble before class war.
Would that class war turn into a communist revolution? Probably not, but after a dozen or so dictatorships and overthrows across a century (and a lot of war casualties) or so we might see the US stabilize. If the internet and interpersonal communications are preserved that will improve the chances that we’d see more public-serving models get implemented. This is the part of how we get there from here for which we don’t have sound theory. But we also don’t know yet how to stop fascist movements from redirecting outrage from the ownership class to marginalized population demographics, hence the genocides currently developing.
But Occupy absolutely had a legitimate grievance and some specific demands, many of which were not unreasonable or out of the scope of US state and federal governments. It’s just that the plutocrats that control our officials didn’t want to do those things, kinda like universal healthcare.
Because it was one of the only time the “racists” and the “communists” (before they were called that) actually came together against the only people holding them down.
how can we start it back up again
Stop buying into petty, culture-war “Parade of Politics.” This goes for both sides.
Normally yes - agreed and upvoted - but the current petty, culture-war “Parade of Politics” has ramifications that will make Occupy, protest, and rights in general a lot harder or more dangerous to fight for.
It seems shit to fight the politicians instead of the money driving them, but they don’t intend to stay subservient to the money once the choices are gone.
It’s hard to keep a protest going when you don’t have focused power behind it. The general messaging of economic inequality carried on and we’ve been talking about the 1% vs the 99% since, but the key advantage that the billionaires have is that even though there are far fewer of them, the system is structured such that they can use their money to direct the focus. The raw numbers of people mean nothing without that focus.
It takes an extraordinary event to bring out the sheer number of people, so I’m afraid something like it won’t start back up unless something catastrophic happens (e.g. popping of the everything bubble leading to a new great depression). Sustaining it will be a matter of organization which is much more difficult to figure out, especially when individual resources are scarce.
I don’t have an answer to this but I’m glad the question is being asked and I hope it will start up again or something better will take its place!
Why? It accomplished nothing.
You haven’t either yet we still let you walk around and speak freely.
For all their passion, they lacked focus.
I talked to one in Portland as the protest had gone on for a while.
“What can the big banks do to make you dust off your hands, go ‘my work here is done!’, and go back home?”
“I want them to fucking die!”
Well, clearly that’s not going to happen, but he had no backup plan.
Sounds like what happened at CHAZ, except with less murder investigations in the follow-up
That was just hilarious to watch, first the tanks were fawning all over it and clambering for their own AZ districts to institute tyranny of the faithful over, and then when it went bust suddenly it was anarchists and they all knew it was doomed from the start.
Sounds like a typical lemmy.ml user.
I read an anecdote from Reddit about a protestor’s experience in Occupy Wall Street. Some people just went along to the protests for the sake and experience of it. Many people didn’t know what they were doing. I think this is why protests require some sort of organisation and leadership. The civil rights movement was so effective because they more were organised and had focus. Any movements after that haven’t gained more momentum because of disparate structure and factionalism.
I’ve attended a few pro Palestine protests here in the UK and I was so unaware of what I was attending for the first one. I’m in a very liberal city and had previously gone to pride marches and trans pride ‘protests’ that were effectively demonstrations for fun as it was largely preaching to the choir.
Showing up to the first pro Palestine protest and realising that it’s a coordinated effort to block roads and generally financially harm the companies that support Israel made me realise how naive I was being by conflating peaceful demonstrations to drum up support with a coordinated effort to harm the opposition.
Nothing has changed since then it seems. I constantly read comments with similar sentiment towards rich people here.
Lemmy users would never post images of a guillotine on a serious discussion post, it goes against our collective morals 🦑
there was a handful (like about 3 or 4) of the movement that actually came up with serious economic analysis and ideas for reform, there were a few youtube video presentations of their work from that time but i have no idea if they still exist
There’s a book about this:
Bevins reports that, at crucial moments, due to their lack of organisation and structure, key actors often replicated tactics they had learned beforehand. Their “repertoire” left them ill-prepared for both the challenges and opportunities that arose.
Lack of centralized messaging and organized leadership
You probably can’t name a single person who came to national prominence as a direct result of their participation in OWS, and that’s exactly why it fizzled, movements don’t need leaders necessarily, but absent that they absolutely need a gameplan, which OWS did not have, just a general anti-rich sentiment without many proposals for change other than “lock them up.”
I think this is the broad issue with most would be revolutionary groups, they never plan further than “just do a revolution bro” beyond dreaming of the utopia they’ll surely usher in when the enemy is defeated. Revolutionary movements need to operate more like John Brown, man didn’t just go south and start shooting, he gathered a convention of black leaders to sign a new constitution to inaugurate in the event that he won. Granted it was a bit loco, part of it literally involved turning black America into a settler nation in the Appalachia’s, but the point still stands, the man knew what victory would look like and that’s how he was able to gather the following he did before his capture and death.
I think this was because occupy was a product of the internet and there are very few leaders that come out of the internet in the social justice space. There are a lot of voices, but few stand above the crowd and even if they do manage to, when you’re dealing with controversial topics, there is a very good likelihood that such a person’s opponents would dig up some dirt on them or exaggerate something they did or said in an effort to cancel or make them into a joke.
It’s a built-in feature of internet groups that they are bad at producing messages and leaders for a wider audience. The dynamics of facebook groups and internet forums reward preaching to the choir and punishes compromises, both with opposition, moderates and reality.
The problem is that figureheads can be discredited and taken down. You need a figurehead who isnt only has an unimpeachable background, but so do their parents, their friends… they need to have the right education, the right job, the right EVERYTHING
I’d even go so far to say that you would almost NEED to have a woman of color because a few grand slipped to the right girl and all of a sudden "Occupy Spokesman John Smith"standing up to Wall st is “Alleged Rapist John Smith”
I have no doubt they would find a way to discredit them.
The problem is that figureheads can be discredited and taken down
The problem is that Leftists always eat each other because of their ridiculous utopian ideals. Anyone who has even the slightest whiff of something wrong with them is immediately attacked and cast down, so no leader can ever emerge.
If y’all ever want to have any sort of influence, you need to reject the idea of purity tests. People are flawed, and people are different. Embrace it, don’t keep hoping for a perfect messiah.
Quit projecting, it wasnt the left who continually pointed out that George Floyd had a criminal record and somehow that justified a cop kneeling on his back for 7 minutes until he suffocated. It was the right wing boot lickers.
The right are the ones that accuse the left of being groomers but keep getting busted on child sex offenses. The right are the ones campaigning on family values and then getting busted sucking other men off in airports.
Any leftist leader who isnt squeaky clean lets the right turn it into a discussion about the person not the movement, lets them muddy the waters with endless whataboutim and if they cant do that, they will pay someone to create mud.
Not the parent commenter, but: That’s not what projection is, no one brought up George Floyd, being a sex offender isn’t the only thing people get canceled for, and leftists absolutely eat their own on a regular basis.
I don’t know, but wasn’t it focused on the wrong thing? Like hating the player rather than the game. Didn’t the politicians let it happen? Wall St follows the rules or gets in trouble. You can say wall st influenced the politicians but that’s still on the politicians.
OWS existed because banks were getting bailed out and ordinary people weren’t.
Since then, an alternative money supply with no bailouts has gained tremendous momentum.
So we’re still protesting, just in a way that’s harder to shut down for “public safety” reasons. And instead of participation making you worse off, it makes you better off. Over time, adverse selection will leave only bailout recipients using bailout money.
If you’re referring to bitcoin for that alternative money supply then I regret to inform you that it’s manipulated to hell and back, from "stable"coin printing to now ETFs.
Believe it or not, it used to be even worse! The big step forward IMHO is that there’s no privileged party that has an advantage manipulating the price. Congress should be prohibited from owning anything but long-term dollar bonds.
The big step forward IMHO is that there’s no privileged party that has an advantage manipulating the price.
Until Elon Musk tweets out that he will exchange Tesla vehicles for Bitcoin or that Dogecoin is a good investment.
Digital currencies are somehow worse than gambling unless you’re famous enough to do a pump-and-dump.
People are still getting hosed with that “alternative money system”. It’s the rare person that makes enough and bails out with profits, even rarer gets enough to be wealthy. It’s the “influencer” of money. Everyone thinks they can be the winner, but there’s tens of thousands of failures for each person on the top.
Simple straight forward true answers:
It faded away because of a lack of clear concise achievable goals.
We can start it up again by creating a list of clear concise achievable goals which everyone involved agrees strongly upon.
