CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-Before memory fades completely, this is the time to take stock of the Occupy mass movement of 2011. A few years into the Great Recession, it began with Occupy Wall Street, and then quickly spread to over 1000 encampments, including other countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel.
LA’s Occupy group was one of the largest encampments, and in my view, correctly picked City Hall as the site for its tents, kitchens, rallies, and daily General Assembly. Against all odds, it survived four months, until late at night on November 30, 2011, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered 1400 heavily armed cops to attack and arrest the 300 remaining hard-core occupiers.
This model of political repression repeated itself throughout the entire country, following a game plan that the Obama Administration’s Justice Department developed with the Department of Homeland Security. Even though the Occupy movement was fixated on occupiers who might engage in violent protests, in the end Occupy was the repeated victim of state violence, systematically perpetrated by the very government it held responsible for record levels of economic inequality.
In the subsequent six years, the remnants of Los Angeles’ Occupy movement have survived in smaller form, concentrating their efforts on helping Skid Row residents and opposing gentrification throughout Los Angeles. The best way to follow them is through their Facebook page: Occupy Los Angeles.
As for City Hall itself, it learned two minor lessons from successfully crushing the local Occupy movement:
- Declare the grounds of City Hall a no-camping-allowed city park;
- Re-landscape this fake park with so many succulents that future protesters would have fewer grassy areas for their tents.
What the Occupy Movement Got Right
Occupy’s main focus was economic inequality in the United States, with its famous slogan about the fabulously wealthy one percent ruling over the 99 percent. Given the changes in regressive tax and health care legislation that the Trump Administration is pushing through a compliant Republican-controlled Senate and House, the economic inequality that Occupy protested will only get worse.
This means there will be new mass movements opposing economic inequality, although it is hard to predict when they will emerge, their tactics, and the breadth of their political agenda. What we do know is that these sons and daughters of Occupy will encounter far more sticks than carrots. They may win a few token reforms, but they should gird themselves for extensive political surveillance and violent repression, similar to that which the Obama administration and local City Halls inflicted on Occupy.
What the Occupy Movement Got Wrong
We also know the many shortcomings of the Occupy movement and what mistakes future mass movements should avoid. In my view, these are the main lessons:
Lesson 1) Neglecting local issues: Even though the Occupy movement focused on economic inequality and the local Occupy group planted itself next to LA’s City Hall, these occupiers rarely looked inside the building. Nevertheless, current and retired City employees explained to them how City Hall promotes economic inequality, but the occupiers did not follow up on these leads. Had they done so, they would have observed well-dressed officials bestowing lucrative gifts to their Big Real Estate buddies through spot-zoning, Re:Code LA, Community Plan updates, Transit Oriented Development, affordable housing Density Bonuses, and similar zoning and planning gimmicks.
Likewise, the local Occupy movement did not pay attention to the unequal delivery of public services and infrastructure in Los Angeles. Furthermore, right in front of their eyes the LAPD extensively spied on them from police headquarters across the street, as well as on-site, with armed officers freely walking through their encampment to prepare for their violent attack on the night of November 30.
While the remnants of Occupy LA are now clearly on the right track with their work in Skid Row and opposition to gentrification, we need to be sure that the upcoming mass movements continue to pay close attention to the many local programs that generate and maintain economic inequality.
Lesson 2) Neglecting outreach: The global Occupy tactic of spontaneous tent communities might have worked for young people with flexible life styles, but it became a barrier to supporters with infirmities, courses, families, and jobs. Furthermore, the Occupy encampments, like the one at LA’s City Hall, were remarkably insular. Even though tens of thousands of unionized public employees from the City of Los Angeles, LA County, the State of California, and the Federal Government walked by or through the Occupy site every day, there were no efforts to meet and educate them. What was missing was outreach to these potential supporters, as well as to the many thousands of followers who regularly visited the Occupy LA site.
Lesson 3) Connections between Domestic and Foreign Policy: Another shortcoming of the nationwide Occupy movement was its failure to oppose U.S. foreign/military policy, especially its role in draining extensive resources from domestic programs. After all, it was President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous speech in 1961 that made this linkage clear, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” More than a half century later, this country’s expanding military budget continues to siphon off essential funding from housing, health, education, mass transit, and public assistance programs that could reduce inequality.
Locally, I saw this same indifference to U.S. government militarism. At the height of the Occupy movement in LA, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) led an anti-war march to the downtown Federal Building marking the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The ICUJP sent representatives to the nightly Occupy LA General Assembly, and they successfully gained its support for their event. Then, the following morning the anti-war march circumnavigated City Hall twice to make sure the occupiers joined a two-block procession to the nearby Federal Building. But, hardly any occupiers participated, and this same pattern repeated itself throughout the entire Occupy movement.
The Occupy movement’s focus was strictly on domestic issues, precisely like the liberal wing of the Democratic Party now led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. While these officials are strong advocates for consumer protection, education, health care, immigration, climate change, reduced police violence and mass incarceration, and infrastructure spending, like Occupy, they, too, have little to say about U.S. government militarism, including:
- The ongoing $1 trillion per year U.S. military budget;
- Endless U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Libya;
- Continued drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syrian, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya;
- 800 foreign U.S. military bases; and
- Enormous U.S. arm sales and transfers to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, and Israel – despite their repeated violations of the U.S. Arms Export Act and Leahy Act.
Lesson 4) Democrats and Electoral Politics: The Occupy movement was not involved in electoral politics, but nevertheless had a disjointed relationship with the Democratic Party. While it never formally supported its electoral candidates, nor voiced explicit support for the party’s program of foreign bases, arms shipments, invasions, occupations, and wars, its silence amounted to implicit support for these bipartisan policies.
Meanwhile, in LA the Occupy movement accepted support from Mayor Villaraigosa’s administration, and it refused to examine the tarnished connections between City Hall’s Democratic Party officials and their wide circle of crony capitalists. Nevertheless, the Villaraigosa administration still unleashed the full force of the LAPD to assault the Occupy LA encampment and jail 291 occupiers. This should have been a teachable moment: be wary of the Democrats.
Then, four years later, Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination resurrected Occupy’s central issue of economic inequality, with the same unwillingness to critique U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless, while some Occupy alums continued to avoid electoral politics, many others became Sandernistas. They were undaunted by the Democratic Party’s hawkishness and its long history of absorbing and then neutralizing the civil rights, anti-war, environment, and women’s mass movements.
Conclusions? As we move into the Trump era, inequality, along with the other issues that have triggered prior mass movements, such as civil rights, will get worse, and there will be organized push back. If these movements learn from both Occupy’s successes (its 1% framing) and failures (cutting themselves off from potential supporters, overlooking municipal politics, failing to link economic inequality to foreign policy, and trusting Democratic politicians,) they have an excellent chance of success.
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. Please send comments, corrections, and topics for future columns to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
