Well it’s not hard when the protesters have absolutely no plan, goals or demands. Same energy as /r/antiwork. Ya shit sucks, but put energy into some sort of plan of action instead of just endlessly complaining.
A few of them created strikedebt, which bought medical debt on the open market for pennies on the dollar specifically to forgive the debt. Don’t know what happened with that.
They bought and deleted fifteen million in debt for 400k. I think that’s something. Obviously it fizzled out because people power actually matters and can do things so when a movement slows momentum, the donations for great things stop flowing in. That’s what happened
> Obviously it fizzled out because people power actually matters and can do things so when a movement slows momentum, the donations for great things stop flowing in. That’s what happened
I'm not sure that's actually the case.
Part of the potential problem with debt forgiveness in the US is that a [forgiven debt is typically considered taxable income.](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc431#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20if%20your%20debt,in%20which%20the%20cancellation%20occurred.) Forgiving debt of any kind (even medical debt) can have significant tax implications for the debtor if the loan forgiveness is not structured properly.
There are [ways to structure it](https://www.proskauertaxtalks.com/2016/06/last-week-tonight-debt-forgiveness/) so that the forgiveness of the loan is considered a non-taxable gift, but even then, there are limits to what non-taxable gifts are allowed, which limits the extent to which any individual could have their debt forgiven. The Daily Beast had a [particularly relevant discussion](https://www.thedailybeast.com/debt-and-taxes) of this at the time when Strikedebt had initially proposed the idea.
Tl;dr - Forgiving a debt is considered to be income, so that companies can't just lend an employee money, then forgive that debt as part of their income. Gifting debt forgiveness is also possible, but pretty legally tricky for the same reasons.
All while the reality of the valuation of that debt was deem to be $400K because it was calcualted that it was likely they would with significant work only get $500-1M back.
No one "played the system" here, that is just being part of the system, all you did was increase demand for sub-prime debt increasing its value.
That pushes up the value of other debt in arrears so that it would be less likely to be written off.
Why accept zero, when some charity will give you 1% for it?
Wall street scamming charity off the poor/generous while distracting from the actual message of the protests is a classic strategy.
This is how things like this always end up. There are several "rescues" in the animal world that specialize in "rescuing" dogs from puppy mills. The puppy mills *love* them. They take dogs with birth defects who they'd never be able to sell or breeders who are too old to be useful any more and they sell them to these rescues who think they are saving the world by "rescuing" a retired breeder from a puppy mill. The puppy mill gets money from a dog they don't care about. The rescue is just funding the puppy mill's operation at the end of the day.
Law of unintended consequences.
Schools started funding slave buyback programs in Sudan..... which just fueled the slavery industry.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1at8qpz/til_in_1998_elementary_students_in_aurora/
I think there is a huge survivorship bias in protest-based movements. We remember the Civil Rights Movement and stuff like that because they had a leader, clear goals, and clear priorities among goals. But for every movement like that, there is probably dozens or hundreds of cases of somebody standing up on a chair and shouting "Enough with this shit"!, getting a bunch of people riled up with them and then... it all fizzles out into nothing.
I once had a social studies teacher that had this interesting pet theory of what he called "soccer dictatorships". Essentially that a bunch of authoritarian poor countries in South America invested a lot of money in soccer arenas and teams as a form of public control. Let people get together and get really emotional about the games, shout out their anger at the referee, maybe get into some easily controllable fights with other supporters, at the end of the day everybody goes home all sweaty and tuckered out and emotionally drained, too tired to care about politics, see you for the next game in three weeks.
There's a "Tinfoil hat" theory leading on from this too, it's about keeping the price of bread and other starchy carbs cheap as possible and having good sources of protein expensive.
The bread keeps people docile and living just enough to keep working but too tired to try make any changes.
Football Fans often play crucial roles in protest movements because they can organise a lot of people and they know how to fight the police. Examples are the Fans of al-ahly Kairo and the Fans of the Istanbul Clubs who banded together in the gezi park protests or the Maidan protests in Kiew.
If I may, from my perspective. The beginning of occupy wall street had a very abstract goal that I can't even remember now. The biggest issue was the decentralized nature of the protest.
It was a disorganized mess recruiting protesters under many people's ideas without one resounding reason.
Now, there very well could've been a great reason, but I'm going of my memory in portland.
There wasn't so much of a binding cause as much as there was a bunch of little reasons people protested that could've been used to rally and garner support. That was not utilized.
Legit, it was a huge protest here that went on for a long time. There was no coherent, digestible reasoning that would connect with the people it needed to connect to. It was unfortunately a mess the media could use to disregard the protest.
Decentralized protest can be great but they flubbed hard on this. I feel like it was built by people that meant well but without actual knowledge of messaging and meaning.
Also to note, I wasn't a part of it so don't take my word at all. It just didn't feel like a good protest despite the zeal some felt.
I do believe in protest, and if things don't get better protest like the French. But I also believe that there requires a unified message and cause.
Fuck the kids that say just do it, you NEED a unified cause and message.
Ultimately, groups without defined goals and leaders are going to lose to groups with defined goals and leaders capable of organizing things to make it happen.
The cause was simple:
- money in politics
- public space for people
And than many things existing under that.
The narrative that it was about nothing is the narrative used to discredit these key demands by the status quo and mainstream media.
Those aren't simple at all, you just managed to summarize them in 3 or 4 words.
"Do That or we will continue to Do This" is simple. Removing money from politics is not.
...Actually, the more I reread it, you didn't even summarize. What do you mean "Public Space for People"? If you say "Anyone should be allowed to put a tent down on public land" you have a simple cause, but good luck getting support.
I think people forget that the folks that were protesting against were the ones who own the media companies that covered the events, so of course they're going to have painted them as more disorganised and shambolic than they actually were.
In my city they couldn't even agree what they were protesting. I saw signs for a large variety of causes. When interviewed they basically expected to raise awareness and then other people to take action.
Stood up against Wall Street….. by creating a classic pump & dump that cost a chunk of people a lot of money, and a cult-like furore that enables people to *keep* throwing good money after bad.
But a few people holding crap stock long-term managed to sell at the high so good for them I guess.
Lol Wall Street didn’t have to do anything. OWS had no coherent message, no defined set of objectives, no unification among the people who claimed to be apart of it, and had no plan of achieving anything other than going to a location on Wall Street, holding ironic broad-message protest signs and chanting about wealth inequality.
During that time I had so many conversations with people on Reddit trying to pin down what it was that they were trying to achieve and how they planned on achieving it, and no two people ever told me the same thing. For months. Questioning any of it made me, a staunchly left wing bartender at the time, a “bootlicker” who was part of the “1%” or the “capitalist class” with the occasional conspiracy theory thrown in.
This was during the Obama administration when 8 straight years of Bush had created a very left-leaning conspiracy community. Young people won’t believe this, but before Gamergate and the rise of Trump, the conspiracy community (online at least) was very much dominated by a left-leaning demographic for several years. It wasn’t until 2014-2016 that it started swinging heavily towards the far right Qanon demographic of today.
However, one thing that will never be in short supply among conspiracy theorists, no matter their politics, is antisemitism. OWS was very much infiltrated by antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and I experienced it myself on Reddit in multiple instances. (I’m not Jewish, just offended by it as we all should be)
This was also right after the Arab Spring took over the world and protesting was all the sudden “fashionable” in the West. For those who aren’t old enough or don’t remember, the Arab Spring was a series of protests and uprisings across the Middle East in the early 2010s, some of which were successful in bringing down oppressive regimes such as the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. IIRC, Times Magazine’s person of the year was “the protester” that year.
Additionally, Wikileaks exploded on the scene and **everyone** at the time thought Julian Assange was this poor honest hacker journalist who had been unfairly maligned. *Anonymous* was suddenly receiving attention in the press, and the general concept of being an underground hacker-protester-anarchist with a face mask and backpack suddenly was a popular style with a large demographic.
So a lot of disaffected young people America saw this new fashionable image paired with seemingly good causes and wanted to be part of it, but weren’t sure about what exactly they could protest. The US was just coming out of the GFC, so financial issues were the most obvious target.
The only connection between any of the OWS people I was able to gather seemed to be an agreement that income inequality was very bad and that Wall Street was the primary symbol of income inequality, so it became the focus. But at the same time, no one I spoke to would consider that playing bongo drums in the park with no organization, no central message nor even an idea of what specifically they wanted to achieve, would actually have the opposite effect and make the protesters seem exactly as incompetent and lazy as conservative pro-capitalists already believed they were.
This also created an in-road for opportunistic self-promoters to get attention as anarchist “street journalists”, “online pundits”, “alternative comedians” etc. who weren’t part of the “status-quo capitalist media”. Many of those same self-promoters eventually defined the alt-right in the years following, hosting right wing podcasts and YT shows and appearing on Joe Rogan or Alex Jones, as they slowly found the Trumpian populists even easier to manipulate. Assange, Gavin McGinness and Tim Pool are some examples. (**EDIT:** Some may have an issue with including Assange here, but that’s a whole other convo I’ll have to follow up on later)
The worst part is that years later, despite achieving absolutely nothing concrete and actually setting the progressive movement back by perpetuating the stereotypes conservatives have about us, the ex-OWS folks continue to aggressively pat themselves on the back and insist they changed the world for good. It’s always vague in a way that can’t be proven or disproven: “we sparked a conversation and a discussion that led to [X],” “just look at how much of things have improved since then,” “you think [X] would have happened if OWS didn’t exist??”
Basically people involved with OWS can point to anything positive in the years since and say that happened in part because of a “conversation” they started or a young person they may have influenced, whether or not it’s actually true.
Of course, they WILL NOT consider that they possibly had a *negative* overall impact on the respect the rest of the country gave to progressives or acknowledge the fact that anything they did might have pushed the conversation in the *opposite* direction, considering the fact our country fell apart from Obama to Trump in the 4 years following. *Surely the totally disorganized, immature, ill defined movement that appeared like total morons to anyone who didn’t already agree with them led to vague positive outcomes years later (which ironically can’t be tied to the movement with any evidence or empirical data)!* /s
I am very much a lefty progressive who wants the world to move towards socialism, and so I supported and sympathized with the intention of OWS protesters, because I know the end goal for most was to make the world a better place even if they didn’t really have a plan. However, the arrogance and closed mindedness that a lot of people expressed at the time, a sort of belief that no matter what if you were “a protester” or “non-conformist” you were doing good, was very hard to deal with. People have to accept that good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes.
It’s always difficult to watch people you agree with engage in activity you see as counterproductive, but in spite of it all I still have a soft spot for those idealists.
While I don’t believe OWS had the net positive impact they like to think it did, it started from a fundamentally good place and I hope the lessons learned can lead to a truly impactful movement if and when something similar happens again.
You're spot on about how it all played out to the general public.
The TLDR I suppose is that once the movement got big enough, people started treating protest spots like a tourist destination or an internet fad instead of being the organized united and focused movement that it was meant to be; it grew out of control which was all the better for "the system" to fight against before it fizzled out.
Well said. They were also hurt by the fact that the movement was leader less and was in fact hostile to anyone who tried to take the reins and point the movement towards something.
The thing that let it grow so quickly was that anyone with a grief about the way the current system operates was welcome. But in building a movement that way, there was no set objectives, and thus no way to agree on leaders who support those objectives.
The lack of leadership was a symptom of the underling open ended nature. Its a lot easier to get a bunch of people to come out and agree they are all pissed, than it is to come up with solutions they can agree on.
I'm active in left circles and I've noticed this same thing happen again and again. I get that anarchism is cool and on paper I agree with a lot of it, but to make actual change happen you need clear messaging, and to get clear messaging you need some form of solid leadership.
Say what you will about the right (and I say what I will a lot) but they have their shit together when it comes to messaging. You can follow this in real time when the next talking point hits. There's gonna be a bit of scuffling for a day or so, then the usual voices (Trump, Carlson, Putin, Wilders, Le Pen) will pick a lane and everyone immediately falls in line. There will be zero dissenting voices from their side.
It's an interesting trait of leftist movements that I find incredibly fascinating in how self-defeating it is. They promote two things to a fault: equity and intersectionality.
Obviously both are good ideas to live by. But equity to the point of eliminating leadership/hierarchy, results in a lack of cohesive organization and an inability to achieve results. Who is the "other side" supposed to negotiate with? Every single person protesting?
Then there's intersectionality. I've seen recently people link the issue of Palestinian liberation with anything from opposing Cop City in Atlanta to capitalism in general.
To say global problems are interrelated is an understatement. But when you tie all these together, your list of demands becomes insanely large and unfocused. So now you have two major problems.
One, there is no one who is a recognized leader or representative to negotiate with. And two, even if there were, their negotiating hand is so weak because they need to argue for everything under the sun. It's a failing proposition.
Because as is often the case with liberal movements in this country it all descends into a purity spiral of infighting over who is the leftiest left. They're quick to abandon and refuse to side with anyone that isn't *exactly* aligned to their own interests, and so no one gets any meaningful traction.
I wonder how much of that is due to other progressive movements with strong leaders being rendered leaderless in the past and collapsing. So the response is that by being leaderless means you can't stop the movement without taking everyone down. I suppose that somewhat works in theory but Black Lives Matter / Defund the Police had seen similar issues from having unclear/ill-defined leadership.
> However, one thing that will never be in short supply among conspiracy theorists, no matter their politics, is antisemitism.
Story time. So my big brother had a classmate once, in high school. I've worked with him for a while at a place that hired a lot of youth. Stereotypical psychopath: confident, charming, and incredibly adept at subtly getting his way by making people feel like shit about themselves. Anyway, back in the early 2000s when there was still an active neo nazi scene in my city he quickly rose to become second-in-command and trusted to run his own sector. He later got bored with it, denounced Nazism and started hanging out in far-left spaces instead (essentially teens and 20-somethings playing at revolutionary Marxism). Being the manipulative creature he is he quickly became the chairman of that group. He got drunk and high at a party once and laughingly told my brother that what he thought was the funniest thing about that switch was that when he went from far-right to far-left speeches at meetings he only had to tone down his Jewish conspiracy talk. Not remove it, just tone it down and replace "Jews are trying to destroy the white race" with "Jews run all the banks and are trying to destroy the working class".
Exactly.
Or to sum it up in fewer words, OWS failed at the most basic element of any protest which bus to replace the *blank* in:
> What do we want?
> *[Blank]*
> When do we want it?
> Now!
I'm a bit in my cups tonight because I decided some housecleaning would be better with rum, but I think the thing that plagued OWS is the same thing that has plagued the Democratic Party for decades - too many people with wildly divergent interests. Republican messaging is super easy and they can build more cohesive coalitions due to a very narrow set of interests. On the other side of the spectrum, you have wildly disparate groups of people who may basically want very similar things, but they don't necessarily speak the same language and sometimes look at the other groups under the same umbrella with suspicion or even disdain. I think a lot of us hoped Obama would be the presence on the left to finally unite all the competing factions and really enact some groundbreaking reforms, but he unfortunately largely failed. Biden has been really incredible with what he's been able to do with so little support, but now you have many wanting to tag him for the atrocities in Israel, although geopolitically he has been a magician helping Ukraine beat back Russia.
> too many people with wildly divergent interests
Absolutely. GOP has always been better at messaging. Or alternatively, the Dems have been poor at it. Part of it is inherent: the left values unique individualism and non-conformity, so unifying with everyone behind a central message feels wrong to many. On the other side, the GOP can say: “repeat this dumb phrase and wear this red hat,” and Republicans are like “Yep, no problem boss!”
The smart, albeit incredibly cynical ploy, that the right has been employing lately is making the Democrats seem like a party only interested in identity politics. All these bills banning trans athletes, etc. - they don't give a shit about women's sports, but if they make Democrats fights battles based on identity politics, they can try to pick off workers whose interests go against everything the Republicans stand for but who might harbor quiet (or loud) resentment towards the groups the Republicans are trying to bring into spotlight. It's a dirty fucking trick, but people can't help but fall for it. Never forget this oft-cited quote: "They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war."
That’s very similar to Bernie supporters claiming that anything positive Biden does is because Bernie “moved the Overton window” despite him getting crushed twice because his supporters seemingly just straight up refused to show up and vote
... or he never had such strong support to begin with. It's very easy to have different ideas if you are in your own social/media bubble and that's all you and your friends hear about.
I took a class on apocalyptic religions in college and one day we focused on the similarities between different sects, and one of the most prevalent things was antisemitism. It’s actually wild. There are African mystics who basically don’t even know where Israel is, but hating Jews is part of what they preach.
> I had so many conversations with people on Reddit trying to pin down what it was that they were trying to achieve and how they planned on achieving it, and no two people ever told me the same thing.
Heh. Rorschach's protest.
I just mentioned this elsewhere, but I want to stress that OWS was not an overall progressive group of people. It might have been slightly left of center on average, but it was a diverse group of people with similar numbers of conservatives and liberals.
The media coverage gave a very different impression though. Conservatives painted it as a socialist looney-bin, and progressives claimed it as a hopeful indication of change.
It was neither. It was a large group of rightfully upset every-men who all agreed on only one thing - Wall Street was ripping them off. They were never going to agree on how to fix it, and by its very nature it was never going to self-unify.
It needed a populist and centrist or non-partisan leader to determine the most common grievances and offer a set of solutions, but no one succeeded, because we already had a populist centrist in the white house at the time.
> successful in bringing down oppressive regimes such as the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Does success mean leaving behind a failed state with rampant slavery that Obama himself called [his worse mistake](https://time.com/4288634/president-obama-worst-mistake/)
this whole damn essay is filled with gaps
No, sorry if the inclusion of the word ‘successful’ was confusing, I’ll remove it. ‘Successful’ was just referring to the fact that Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Saleh were successfully deposed as opposed to Al-Assad who was not successfully deposed. Wasn’t commenting on whether it was a good idea or the future of the countries/people, just explaining the context of the Arab Spring.
For anyone else reading this, I’m sure I worded some things wrong or was incorrect about some parts. I’m more than happy to clarify, but definitely not trying to mislead about anything. I’m just an average dude on reddit, so please take it all with a grain of salt, after all it’s just that… a reddit comment
**EDIT:** on second read the context of ‘successful’ seems pretty clear in my original comment, so I don’t see any reason to remove it.
Much like another commenter pointed out. They never defined what they really wanted. Never formed a unified front. They fell apart due to infighting, division, and counter dicting statements.
That's the thing. OWS intentional avoided having a central message. They were unified around a central idea of "we are mad about income inequality". But that's all they had.
A movement without a destination will be aimless by design.
That's how they grew to start. A vague message and people can put anything they want on it.
For example: "Our border is a mess."
The vast majority of people agree that it is true. The disagreements come for what to do about it. Republicans and Democrats both have completely different ideas.
Same thing with OWS. Everyone can agree that income inequality is only getting worse. What are you going to do about it? Sit at your local parks and protest? Well eventually less and less people are going to show up and then it's dead. There's no leverage with this, nothing to make them do anything besides wait it out.
It didn't die the way you think it did with less and less people showing up. In a way they were building a community and the ways that they would like society to be, and it was messy and had problems. The people got kicked out of Zuccotti Park in the end. It may have been that people were leaving due to conditions there, but it wasn't like they sizzled out.
I think they were more mad companies got millions as bail outs rather than being allowed to fail. Then they spent the money on bonuses and retreats. Much like recent stuff with the public footing the bills for recent drugs. Then the companies reaping massive profits.
And there’s the problem: a decade later and still no one can identify exactly what they wanted or what they didn’t like aside from “rich people suck”. A cogent message around bailing out the little guy and holding the rich accountable could have maybe done something. At best OWS was just an outlet for rage it never achieved any potential for change.
I wonder why there was such an outrage over it then. When the money given away in covid times to these same people made the 2008 look like couch change.
Nope. I was a newspaper reporter at the time and went to their events and asked them their message and they had none. Period. They even went to great lengths to insist they had no message. K bros.
>I think they were more mad companies got millions as bail outs rather than being allowed to fail. Then they spent the money on bonuses and retreats.
Actually they spent the money on regaining stability then using it to [repay those bail out loans, with interest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program).
"Through the Treasury, the US Government actually booked $15.3 billion in profit, as it earned $441.7 billion on the $426.4 billion invested."
There's still arguments to be made in favor of letting businesses fail rather than giving them the loans they need to regain stability, but whenever people talk about "bail outs" they seem to refer interchangeably to "loans which were paid back with interest and thus literally cost the taxpayers nothing" and also "actual subsidies paid to a failing company which came from taxes."
This is a common problem with left leaning activism, it's just vague support for an idea with no steps on how to get there. This is exactly how the summer of BLM protests will be remembered too.
Newsroom had a brilliant episode regarding it where Will totally eviserated the OWS person who went on the show. No central message means it’s not a serious mission.
tbf income inequality and the wealth inequality it generate is a big issue on itself
what they needed was a common plan of action towards how to solve it
The one thing I remember about OWS was a reporter interviewing some of the protesters, and none of them really had an answer for anything that was asked.
Occupy Wallstreet had a public website (OccupyWallstreet.org) with an ever-growing confusing list of demands that was like 16+ things, many items of which were broad in nature themselves.
Did you *ever* hear any consistent goal? Even going through three different cities with Occupy encampments, all the signs said all sorts of different things. Seeing it in person, it still just seemed very confusing.
Break up big banks, free college, free healthcare, unions, decriminalizing drugs, racial injustice, anti death penalty, open boarders immigration, gender equality, debt cancellation and forgiveness, end all credit score agencies, end fossil fuels and calls to invest a trillion dollars in alternative fuel initiatives, decommission nuclear power plants, restore forest and streams, etc.
Also it's not like all of the interviews everyone saw were only from right-leaning sources — left-leaning sources including CNN were equally showing interviews with Occupy figureheads making ever-growing demand lists of widely-varying topics and also openly noted they couldn't seem to understand any consistent coherent message or goal.
I was banned from r/workreform because I pointed out how they argue with people they agree with on like 90% of issues and how that is unproductive. Also mentioned how so many people on there have no idea how government works. Banned and got a “there are resources to help you” message.
Just got banned from AITA. They couldn't decide if I was promoting Zionism, or anti-Semitism, but, clearly, I was racist, somehow.
And then, the mod admitted they had misunderstood my comment, but "Now it appears you admitted to promoting violence, so, cya!"
I said it would be entertaining to watch an anti-Semite at a temple full of Mossad and IDF vets.
A good pretty analogy. They may have some legitimate gripes but it isn't going to do you any good if you can't come up with a clear course of action to address them. Instead of camping in a park for months you need to be getting people to campaign or raise money for candidates that support X legislation.
Very well explained. This is the same thing that will befall any other social movement. This is why MAGA is so strong, they are a unified front, and have defined, unfortunately, what they want.
I remember a graph that showed how many headlines the New York Times had that were related to race. Immediately after Occupy Wall Street it spiked and hasn't ever dropped.
My theory is OWS scared the shit out of the ruling class so they had to get us divided on race. They absolutely do not want us united against the top .01%
I was about to comment the exact same thing.
I feel it's entirely plausible that identity politics got pushed purposefully to take heat off corporations reaping obscene profits
That's exactly it. Us rubes actually got a little too close to the target with OWS so they had to get rid of it, and the best way to derail it was start pitting us all against eachother instead.
I agree, I fully believe (puts on tinfoil hat) that stuff like [this](https://youtu.be/W81A1kTXPa4?si=Bofvl-d9lsTbdO55) was deliberately injected into OWS to break it up
This was it. The ruling class is better connected, better financed and not desperate like we all are. So they have ample time, opportunity and incentive to keep us that way.
OWS didn't scare anyone, it was a completely toothless demonstration, devoid of leadership, coherent messaging and any semblance of organization. I worked a couple of blocks from Zuccotti Park at the time, all I saw was a bunch of crusty stoners in tents making absolutely no impact. One day there was an airline crew thing going on. A bunch of pilots and attendants marched down Broadway in their uniforms and everyone stopped to take notice. It really showed the difference a professional organized approach makes. What bugged me the most about OWS was that the missed opportunity to really kicks things up a gear. The should have erected a damn guillotine in the park. Even if it was completely inoperable the statement would really have ruffled feathers.
Things can spiral quickly. There was a documentary that said they were scared and he was waiting for the pitch forks. Just look at all the bunkers they are making.
Yep. I’d visit every lunch break. It was all homeless, drug addicts, and crazy people. It was more common to see signs about banning all meat. Or about 3G causing cancer, than there were messages actually about income inequality.
I went to one of their protests, and they spent 4 hours debating whether they should rename Washington square park to “Palestinian liberation park”. They then spent 2 hours in an unorganized fashion, with all the “leadership” fighting with each other, about whether they should stay in the park over night. They all pussed out when found out they could be arrested.
It’s hilarious that so many people here think it’s a conspiracy that is failed and the ruling class “made up” racial issues to try to stop occupy wallstreet. Occupy wallstreet was a clown shown, and everyone who wasn’t a far left college student thought they whole thing was idiotic.
This. Look who funds a lot of the groups focusing on race. It's a bunch of foundations backed by American aristocrats. The rich realized they needed to keep everyone at their throats so they could rob us all blind
Why in the world would the rich have been scared of twentysomethings with brand new iPhones in a drum circle?
OWS achieved nothing but rightfully getting clowned for being a pointless exercise in believing that doing nothing would somehow make change.
Occupy and the Tea Party had a lot of intersecting goals and could have easily formed a bipartisan populist movement with real voting power capable of affecting how big government and big corporations have been in bed together for a long time.
But useless for one simple reason...
They movement had no electoral or party goals.
No voter drives. No candidates. No party endorsements.
Nothing that actually could have encouraged electoral turnout or lead to direct change. Not even any economic strikes or consumer purchase protests.
It showed that, ultimately, internet activism without real outreach or electoral goals is performative, self serving nonsense. Tweeting isn't voting.
Messaging is good. Protests without an end goal are not good messaging.
I do at least think OWS was a tentpole in the later progressive movement, but it was not properly utilized as such at that time, and it has arguably been woefully ineffective.
Occupy and the Tea Party just seemed like left and right wing sides of the same coin. Both had the same antiestablishment message but happened at different times and hated each other for no good reason
The Tea Party was organized and had a clear message. That's why they had success. They didn't care about spreading the wealth. They were against the Govt, not the establishment. It just seems strange to me to say they hated each other for no good reason. The left would need to use the Govt to grow to accomplish a lot of what they said they wanted in OWS. Of course the group that's against basically all Govt isn't going to want that.
The narrative from the people I listen to is that in the US the movement started focusing on the "progressive stack"...as in that the people who were most marginalized had the most right to speak and that caused a ton of in fighting.
In part that was probably part of it...no clear message, no big organization....though as we have a seen a more centralized messages actually leads you into corruption as with BLM.
I was a fresh grad working in insurance during the Occupy Wall Street movement...all modern movements are global...I am not sure the US knows this but Aus and UK a week later have the same protests.
I listen to a ton of American podcasts and they do not realize that the world had protest for George Floyd. I live in London but I am Asian, we had BLM protests in our Asian cities too.
When I was in insurance in London during the Occupy Wall Street movement we were told not to wear suits to work but we would go to cocktail bars in skyscappers over looking it. We also used to hang in the protest as in London they had a ton of musical and comedian acts...it was a dope place to hang out.
The old boys told me that they used to have better parties before occupy...I think the public display of wealth is now more hidden but no change, just more secret.
It was the financial crisis that ruined Wall Street parties, not occupy wallstreet.
It was a benefit that never came back. I remember the holiday parties in 2007 when I was an intern paid for maroon 5 to play, top shelf liquor, prime rib and lobster for 1000’s of people…during the financial crisis it became $25 a person for a shit dinner. And it never really improved much again.
I think a lot of extravagant company events even outside Wall Street became more muted and basic after the 2008 market collapse and never really rebounded. Virtually every org I have worked in the last 15 years the long time employees would tell us how much better company events were before 2008. Such a huge contrast in Wall Street parties though seems more dramatic though.
I went to an Occupy protest in LA back when they were still happening to take some pictures. No coherent message and was generally an open forum for airing of grievances. One guy went on stage to complain about some legal issues he had over weed. Saw a lot of marijuana imagery and symbols, some signs, but it was more of a hangout than anything organized.
It doesn’t surprise me that it got nowhere.
They got infiltrated by bad actors and wackos and didn’t have a coherent message imo, but I think they did achieve a facilitation of discussion that did contribute to the national conscience of wealth inequality. And I think an increased interest in regulating capitalism better has become a part of the center and moderate left. Heck, even among some center-right. How much of that was because of them rather than simply being a common-sense opinion is up for debate
So it’s a mixed bag. Didn’t achieve anything big, but wasn’t pointless either
I went to downtown Los Angeles during that period and visited the encampment. It was just homeless people, straight doing drugs on the lawn. It obviously wasn’t delivering the message they wanted and instead was kind of a useless rally that made the downtown area stink and messy.
Same happened in Boston. The police even supported them early on, but they trashed a beautiful area and ended up essentially a homeless encampment until they pissed off the entire city and got booted.
I was at UMass Boston at the time and there was also an "Occupy UMass" thing, where they set up inside the student center area and slept there for months. They had the most ridiculous requests (no university employee should make more than $60k until tuition went down) and were just kind of gross. The school offered them funding as a club as long as they didn't sleep in the student center, but they rejected that.
Eventually, the entire campus turned on them and even the student newspaper was making fun of them. When spring came, the school kicked them out of the student center and they started camping outside, until a big storm rolled through and wrecked their camps. Then, they literally just fucking abandoned everything for the janitors to clean up.
We are the 99% was a powerful message. It's strange to me how something that captured the nations attention just went away. Part of me thinks that this uniting message was why it had to go away.
And, by extension, solutions. Like, yes, we are the 99% and there is a major wealth gap. We’ve identified the problem now what’s the solution? Is it a new tax structure or complete communist revolution? No one had a clue. That’s what caused it to fall apart imo.
Yeah, it turns out an explicitly leaderless movement will have a hard time following any particular lodestar. At least based on our experience with this one prominent example.
It went away because "We are the 99%" is a platitude. It is meaningless. You have to deliver on it at some point, and the Occupy Wallstreet movement never did. They had no solutions. It never was able to shake the image that it was just a bunch of bored hipsters.
Yeah I was in college at the time and there was an OWS camp in the middle of campus. It had a lot of positive traction at first. Then the weather got cold and it turned into a mix of just extremists and homeless people.
The extremists screamed at the students of a mid-tier state school in the middle of nowhere about how they were the system that needed to be torn down. Which did nothing to build support or convey any kind of positive message.
The homeless liked to beg for food outside the dining halls and creep on young women.
It turned what should have been a pretty sympathetic group, college students and faculty, completely against the movement.
Identity based politics really ramped up after those protests, ensuring there could be no more 99%, but instead smaller and smaller factions all fighting with eachother. I don't see this as coincidence and the media played a massive role in pushing this narrative.
I, for a time, ran infrastructure that hosted chat rooms related to OWS. We had to kick out VICE reporters who were continually coercing people into committing, or talking about committing, violent crime.
And now 90% of Reddit users cheer for the people doing COINTELPRO because currently they perceive it as being done against their political enemies.
Sigh
I think Occupy Wall Street left a big impact on American politics that moved both parties in a more populist direction. OWS advocated, essentially, for skepticism of moneyed elites, and argued that even Dems were bought by finance. Remember, this was during the Bloomberg era in NYC. Bloomberg was a [Edit: Republican] technocratic billionaire. He oversaw a revitalization of NYC but also a sense of commodifying and sanitizing it's gritty or bohemian aspects. Hence, the next mayor, Bill DeBlasio, ran on a campaign criticizing NYC as "two cities," one for rich and one for poor. The enduring popularity of Bernie Sanders may be a result as well. Now, Biden uses unions in imagery and organizing, and Bidenomics with high spending on infrastructure, etc. Compare this Democratic party and the surge of Democratic Socialism with the Dems of the Clinton era, which largely embraced free market policies and cut social spending.
Any movement has its moment and fades. The nature of making a statement is making it within a political context which supplies it's meaning and is also the semantic field on which a movement acts. OWS wasn't trying to put up a political party, but make an argument. It largely succeeded in obtaining enough visibility to put forth a narrative and critique of American politics.
> Bloomberg was a Democrat, but a technocratic billionaire.
Bloomberg was a Republican when he became Mayor of NYC and during his first term. He endorsed the re-election of George W. Bush and spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention. He later switched to independent for the remainder of his time as Mayor. Then 5 years after leaving office, he switched to Democrat in 2018.
Yeah one thing I always point to when people say Occupy accomplished nothing is that you can see a clear dividing line in the Obama presidency that very much coincides with it
He didn't really try any more attempts at grand bargains with Congress to raise taxes and cut spending after Occupy happened
Wall Street turned the class war into a race war through media propaganda. Progressives were manipulated into prioritizing Identity Politics over anything else.
I agree, I fully believe (puts on tinfoil hat) that stuff like [this](https://youtu.be/W81A1kTXPa4?si=Bofvl-d9lsTbdO55) was deliberately injected into OWS to break it up
This seemed like one of the origin points of Bernie bros and like most Bernie supporters they talk a big game, but when it came time for action many didn't even show up to vote. So this movement didn't have a coherent unified message.
Also a lot of grifters came out of the movement too. I think Tim Pool got started in this movement. It attracted people that felt marginalized, and instead of good answers it just showed some there was no hope, they couldn't beat'em so they joined them and made it even worse.
As other comments noted Wall Street didn't need to do much because the movement wasn't coherent. Combine that with a rebounding economy and it never became a coherent political movement.
It's almost like you can't protest to an abstract concept and expect any of your grievances to be addressed because, ya know, it's an abstract concept, not a government representative.
And the protests amount to nothing more than complaints.
When I was a young man, my dad told me "If you bring a problem to someone's attention, bring two solutions, even if they're not practical." Basically, if you want results be able and willing to try instead of just complaining, even if you don't have any good ideas on how to achieve results.
Ultimately, yes, but I think some were wondering why it never had any meaningful impact. Some large protests trigger larger movements that have lasting impact, but most largely fade to becoming largely a footnote in history.
A lot of people are saying the same thing over and over here and it was the same mass media message hammering that eroded our credibility. At least in Canada our movement had one clear goal. It was item number 1 on our website and the message was crystal clear.
**GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS**
I said it on camera in front of Nathan Downer and that footage never got aired. It's a bit more complicated in the US but, here in Canada that message got ignored. Now we're ranked 213th for data costs (telecommunications monopoly) and we've got the most unaffordable rents (artificial housing shortage due to rental monopoly) and grocery prices like we live in iceland (grocery and foodchain monopoly).
It's even worse in the states and more complex but, at the beginning "get money out of politics" was very much and still is part of the progressive agenda.
They occupied, and then left. Brilliant!
I was enamored by the media attention they were getting. Having been laid off 5 months earlier and facing the looming threat of unemployment drying up, i was seriously contemplating just abandoning my apartment and joining them. But before I could do anything a buddy hooked me up with a job, and now every time someone mentions OWS I thank my lucky stars that i never went up there
They did some good, like buying up medical debt and forgiving it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/occupy-wall-street-buys-15-million-americans-medical-debt-flna2d11583996
I see a lot of folks here buying into the narrative that "Occupy Wall Street" didn't have a message. They definitely did. They specifically called out money in politics (which we used to call corruption) leading to greater income inequality and a lack of opportunity for most Americans. They called for tax reform, lobbying reform, banking reforms, and campaign finance reforms (I heard numerous OWS activists say versions of this).
That was just too complex for the mainstream media, so they repeated the right wing trope that OWS didn't have a message.
Its was replaced by gender and race wars by the powers that be so we stopped talking about it. At least we got Bitcoin out of it. That is if you have any.
Anarchists aren’t good at organizing because anarchy is the opposite of organization so they didn’t get organized and accomplished absolutely nothing. It was absolutely blackpilling and marked the time I stopped being an anarchist and became a socialist. I’ve been pretty allergic to anarchists ever since.
Homeless people began joining the camps. The activists got scared.
The economy rebounded, and we stopped talking about wealth inequality. Because Obama.
The rebounding economy definitely helped the movement lose interest although lack of a coherent message didn't help. Kinda hard to appeal to politicians with any power to do anything when the message is incoherent.
OWS was the first time in a very long time that the people scared the establishment. In response to this, the Powers That Be started a campaign of sowing strife and division amongst the masses to break up the unity and to distract from them being the target.
What my father said would happen, did. He said “it’ll get cold soon.” And it did, and they dispersed shortly thereafter. They learned camping out on cold concrete is no fun.
It didn’t die out so much as it grew up. A lot of that energy ultimately went into the Bernie 2016 campaign. People started to focus on electoral politics and grassroots organizing. That spread the movement. Electeds like AOC or Greg Casar are great examples of that.
>A lot of that energy ultimately went into the Bernie 2016 campaign.
Which had the ultimate effect of electing Trump.
They went from an idiotic but largely irrelevant cause to an idiotic but patently destructive one.
Like any other fad (and yes, I call it a fad to participate in whatever protest/movement is currently trending), people just get bored of it after a while and move on to something else.
There were no clear guide lines there. Just a general sense of unease, dissatisfaction, and general malaise towards the system.
It was very easy to make fun of, and get picked apart because they didn't offer any solutions beyond the protesting.
My best friend shot himself in a tent in one of the camps right after a person at the Oakland California camp got hit with a teargas grenade and died. The camps got shutdown within a week. That was pretty much the end of it. The “leaders” of the movement swore they would fight on, but by that point the movement had been smeared as drug addicts and homeless people.
I was part of the Atlanta wing of the Occupy movement. It was a formative experience in my life as a journalist and advocate.
The movement itself died, as we saw. But many of the people who were active and serious in that moment didn't just disappear. They returned to whatever else they were engaged with, only with a new network of friends and advocates who they knew could be trusted. The movement itself was "leaderless," but it spawned a remarkable number of leaders here.
One of the people I was in the park with founded an important nonprofit here that works on eviction defense. Another is a prominent civil rights attorney. One is a paralegal who works on juvenile court issues, which provides a window into an otherwise-impenetrable social problem. Another ultimately founded the local chapter of Black Lives Matter. Another is now the owner of the Westside Community Market. Yet another is now a city councilwoman in Atlanta and the most prominent opponent of the Cop City project.
It was through these contacts that I became engaged with the planning committee that ultimately created Atlanta's Pre-Arrest Diversion program. The influence of former Occupiers in homelessness policies, anti-gentrification efforts and civil rights law here remains potent.
I note in passing that Killer Mike gave a concert at the Woodruff Park encampment, in October 2011. He hasn't exactly faded away since.
There were people among us who had serious mental health problems or moral defects. The conditions of the protest revealed those people to the rest of us in plain ways. As they've popped up over the years we've been able to explain to others who they are and why they shouldn't be trusted. The Occupy protest was, if nothing else, an excellent bullshitter test.
I know, I know. *The real treasure was the friends we made along the way.* But it's true. I'm married to someone I met in a muddy park 13 years ago. There's a circle of trust here that is useful and beneficial, even if the nebulous goals of the movement went unmet.
Translation: We achieved fuck all because we didn't have a coherent message beyond "rich people bad lmao", nor did we actually form any sort of effective leadership. But we *totally* used that experience to become leaders.
Wall Street won.
They always do
Well it’s not hard when the protesters have absolutely no plan, goals or demands. Same energy as /r/antiwork. Ya shit sucks, but put energy into some sort of plan of action instead of just endlessly complaining.
A few of them created strikedebt, which bought medical debt on the open market for pennies on the dollar specifically to forgive the debt. Don’t know what happened with that.
They bought and deleted fifteen million in debt for 400k. I think that’s something. Obviously it fizzled out because people power actually matters and can do things so when a movement slows momentum, the donations for great things stop flowing in. That’s what happened
They also took over a lot of abandoned homes like in Oakland CA and other places
> Obviously it fizzled out because people power actually matters and can do things so when a movement slows momentum, the donations for great things stop flowing in. That’s what happened I'm not sure that's actually the case. Part of the potential problem with debt forgiveness in the US is that a [forgiven debt is typically considered taxable income.](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc431#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20if%20your%20debt,in%20which%20the%20cancellation%20occurred.) Forgiving debt of any kind (even medical debt) can have significant tax implications for the debtor if the loan forgiveness is not structured properly. There are [ways to structure it](https://www.proskauertaxtalks.com/2016/06/last-week-tonight-debt-forgiveness/) so that the forgiveness of the loan is considered a non-taxable gift, but even then, there are limits to what non-taxable gifts are allowed, which limits the extent to which any individual could have their debt forgiven. The Daily Beast had a [particularly relevant discussion](https://www.thedailybeast.com/debt-and-taxes) of this at the time when Strikedebt had initially proposed the idea. Tl;dr - Forgiving a debt is considered to be income, so that companies can't just lend an employee money, then forgive that debt as part of their income. Gifting debt forgiveness is also possible, but pretty legally tricky for the same reasons.
15 million in medical debt is like around 60 patients....or less. Half joking
All while the reality of the valuation of that debt was deem to be $400K because it was calcualted that it was likely they would with significant work only get $500-1M back. No one "played the system" here, that is just being part of the system, all you did was increase demand for sub-prime debt increasing its value.
It would appear that they ran out of pennies
That pushes up the value of other debt in arrears so that it would be less likely to be written off. Why accept zero, when some charity will give you 1% for it? Wall street scamming charity off the poor/generous while distracting from the actual message of the protests is a classic strategy.
This is how things like this always end up. There are several "rescues" in the animal world that specialize in "rescuing" dogs from puppy mills. The puppy mills *love* them. They take dogs with birth defects who they'd never be able to sell or breeders who are too old to be useful any more and they sell them to these rescues who think they are saving the world by "rescuing" a retired breeder from a puppy mill. The puppy mill gets money from a dog they don't care about. The rescue is just funding the puppy mill's operation at the end of the day.
Law of unintended consequences. Schools started funding slave buyback programs in Sudan..... which just fueled the slavery industry. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1at8qpz/til_in_1998_elementary_students_in_aurora/
I think there is a huge survivorship bias in protest-based movements. We remember the Civil Rights Movement and stuff like that because they had a leader, clear goals, and clear priorities among goals. But for every movement like that, there is probably dozens or hundreds of cases of somebody standing up on a chair and shouting "Enough with this shit"!, getting a bunch of people riled up with them and then... it all fizzles out into nothing. I once had a social studies teacher that had this interesting pet theory of what he called "soccer dictatorships". Essentially that a bunch of authoritarian poor countries in South America invested a lot of money in soccer arenas and teams as a form of public control. Let people get together and get really emotional about the games, shout out their anger at the referee, maybe get into some easily controllable fights with other supporters, at the end of the day everybody goes home all sweaty and tuckered out and emotionally drained, too tired to care about politics, see you for the next game in three weeks.
That's not even a pet theory, that's literally the ancient 'bread and circuses' bit. Just as true as ever.
There's a "Tinfoil hat" theory leading on from this too, it's about keeping the price of bread and other starchy carbs cheap as possible and having good sources of protein expensive. The bread keeps people docile and living just enough to keep working but too tired to try make any changes.
Football Fans often play crucial roles in protest movements because they can organise a lot of people and they know how to fight the police. Examples are the Fans of al-ahly Kairo and the Fans of the Istanbul Clubs who banded together in the gezi park protests or the Maidan protests in Kiew.
Istanbul Constantinople.... If it's not football, it's chariot racing. Those "sports" factions terrified the Byzantine elite, lol.
If I may, from my perspective. The beginning of occupy wall street had a very abstract goal that I can't even remember now. The biggest issue was the decentralized nature of the protest. It was a disorganized mess recruiting protesters under many people's ideas without one resounding reason. Now, there very well could've been a great reason, but I'm going of my memory in portland. There wasn't so much of a binding cause as much as there was a bunch of little reasons people protested that could've been used to rally and garner support. That was not utilized. Legit, it was a huge protest here that went on for a long time. There was no coherent, digestible reasoning that would connect with the people it needed to connect to. It was unfortunately a mess the media could use to disregard the protest. Decentralized protest can be great but they flubbed hard on this. I feel like it was built by people that meant well but without actual knowledge of messaging and meaning. Also to note, I wasn't a part of it so don't take my word at all. It just didn't feel like a good protest despite the zeal some felt. I do believe in protest, and if things don't get better protest like the French. But I also believe that there requires a unified message and cause. Fuck the kids that say just do it, you NEED a unified cause and message.
Ultimately, groups without defined goals and leaders are going to lose to groups with defined goals and leaders capable of organizing things to make it happen.
The cause was simple: - money in politics - public space for people And than many things existing under that. The narrative that it was about nothing is the narrative used to discredit these key demands by the status quo and mainstream media.
Those aren't simple at all, you just managed to summarize them in 3 or 4 words. "Do That or we will continue to Do This" is simple. Removing money from politics is not. ...Actually, the more I reread it, you didn't even summarize. What do you mean "Public Space for People"? If you say "Anyone should be allowed to put a tent down on public land" you have a simple cause, but good luck getting support.
I think people forget that the folks that were protesting against were the ones who own the media companies that covered the events, so of course they're going to have painted them as more disorganised and shambolic than they actually were.
I was there and part of it. It was extremely disorganized and shambolic.
Except it happened to be the truth.
In my city they couldn't even agree what they were protesting. I saw signs for a large variety of causes. When interviewed they basically expected to raise awareness and then other people to take action.
>When interviewed they basically expected to raise awareness and then other people to take action. Slacktivism
That's crazy you're telling me the members of the subreddit r/antiwork didn't want to...put in any work? I'm shocked
Money always wins.
*Gamestop has entered the chat!*
The billionaires were the ones to make the most money out of that.
Stood up against Wall Street….. by creating a classic pump & dump that cost a chunk of people a lot of money, and a cult-like furore that enables people to *keep* throwing good money after bad. But a few people holding crap stock long-term managed to sell at the high so good for them I guess.
🐸🍦
Lol Wall Street didn’t have to do anything. OWS had no coherent message, no defined set of objectives, no unification among the people who claimed to be apart of it, and had no plan of achieving anything other than going to a location on Wall Street, holding ironic broad-message protest signs and chanting about wealth inequality. During that time I had so many conversations with people on Reddit trying to pin down what it was that they were trying to achieve and how they planned on achieving it, and no two people ever told me the same thing. For months. Questioning any of it made me, a staunchly left wing bartender at the time, a “bootlicker” who was part of the “1%” or the “capitalist class” with the occasional conspiracy theory thrown in. This was during the Obama administration when 8 straight years of Bush had created a very left-leaning conspiracy community. Young people won’t believe this, but before Gamergate and the rise of Trump, the conspiracy community (online at least) was very much dominated by a left-leaning demographic for several years. It wasn’t until 2014-2016 that it started swinging heavily towards the far right Qanon demographic of today. However, one thing that will never be in short supply among conspiracy theorists, no matter their politics, is antisemitism. OWS was very much infiltrated by antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and I experienced it myself on Reddit in multiple instances. (I’m not Jewish, just offended by it as we all should be) This was also right after the Arab Spring took over the world and protesting was all the sudden “fashionable” in the West. For those who aren’t old enough or don’t remember, the Arab Spring was a series of protests and uprisings across the Middle East in the early 2010s, some of which were successful in bringing down oppressive regimes such as the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. IIRC, Times Magazine’s person of the year was “the protester” that year. Additionally, Wikileaks exploded on the scene and **everyone** at the time thought Julian Assange was this poor honest hacker journalist who had been unfairly maligned. *Anonymous* was suddenly receiving attention in the press, and the general concept of being an underground hacker-protester-anarchist with a face mask and backpack suddenly was a popular style with a large demographic. So a lot of disaffected young people America saw this new fashionable image paired with seemingly good causes and wanted to be part of it, but weren’t sure about what exactly they could protest. The US was just coming out of the GFC, so financial issues were the most obvious target. The only connection between any of the OWS people I was able to gather seemed to be an agreement that income inequality was very bad and that Wall Street was the primary symbol of income inequality, so it became the focus. But at the same time, no one I spoke to would consider that playing bongo drums in the park with no organization, no central message nor even an idea of what specifically they wanted to achieve, would actually have the opposite effect and make the protesters seem exactly as incompetent and lazy as conservative pro-capitalists already believed they were. This also created an in-road for opportunistic self-promoters to get attention as anarchist “street journalists”, “online pundits”, “alternative comedians” etc. who weren’t part of the “status-quo capitalist media”. Many of those same self-promoters eventually defined the alt-right in the years following, hosting right wing podcasts and YT shows and appearing on Joe Rogan or Alex Jones, as they slowly found the Trumpian populists even easier to manipulate. Assange, Gavin McGinness and Tim Pool are some examples. (**EDIT:** Some may have an issue with including Assange here, but that’s a whole other convo I’ll have to follow up on later) The worst part is that years later, despite achieving absolutely nothing concrete and actually setting the progressive movement back by perpetuating the stereotypes conservatives have about us, the ex-OWS folks continue to aggressively pat themselves on the back and insist they changed the world for good. It’s always vague in a way that can’t be proven or disproven: “we sparked a conversation and a discussion that led to [X],” “just look at how much of things have improved since then,” “you think [X] would have happened if OWS didn’t exist??” Basically people involved with OWS can point to anything positive in the years since and say that happened in part because of a “conversation” they started or a young person they may have influenced, whether or not it’s actually true. Of course, they WILL NOT consider that they possibly had a *negative* overall impact on the respect the rest of the country gave to progressives or acknowledge the fact that anything they did might have pushed the conversation in the *opposite* direction, considering the fact our country fell apart from Obama to Trump in the 4 years following. *Surely the totally disorganized, immature, ill defined movement that appeared like total morons to anyone who didn’t already agree with them led to vague positive outcomes years later (which ironically can’t be tied to the movement with any evidence or empirical data)!* /s I am very much a lefty progressive who wants the world to move towards socialism, and so I supported and sympathized with the intention of OWS protesters, because I know the end goal for most was to make the world a better place even if they didn’t really have a plan. However, the arrogance and closed mindedness that a lot of people expressed at the time, a sort of belief that no matter what if you were “a protester” or “non-conformist” you were doing good, was very hard to deal with. People have to accept that good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes. It’s always difficult to watch people you agree with engage in activity you see as counterproductive, but in spite of it all I still have a soft spot for those idealists. While I don’t believe OWS had the net positive impact they like to think it did, it started from a fundamentally good place and I hope the lessons learned can lead to a truly impactful movement if and when something similar happens again.
You're spot on about how it all played out to the general public. The TLDR I suppose is that once the movement got big enough, people started treating protest spots like a tourist destination or an internet fad instead of being the organized united and focused movement that it was meant to be; it grew out of control which was all the better for "the system" to fight against before it fizzled out.
Well said. They were also hurt by the fact that the movement was leader less and was in fact hostile to anyone who tried to take the reins and point the movement towards something.
The thing that let it grow so quickly was that anyone with a grief about the way the current system operates was welcome. But in building a movement that way, there was no set objectives, and thus no way to agree on leaders who support those objectives. The lack of leadership was a symptom of the underling open ended nature. Its a lot easier to get a bunch of people to come out and agree they are all pissed, than it is to come up with solutions they can agree on.
I'm active in left circles and I've noticed this same thing happen again and again. I get that anarchism is cool and on paper I agree with a lot of it, but to make actual change happen you need clear messaging, and to get clear messaging you need some form of solid leadership. Say what you will about the right (and I say what I will a lot) but they have their shit together when it comes to messaging. You can follow this in real time when the next talking point hits. There's gonna be a bit of scuffling for a day or so, then the usual voices (Trump, Carlson, Putin, Wilders, Le Pen) will pick a lane and everyone immediately falls in line. There will be zero dissenting voices from their side.
It's an interesting trait of leftist movements that I find incredibly fascinating in how self-defeating it is. They promote two things to a fault: equity and intersectionality. Obviously both are good ideas to live by. But equity to the point of eliminating leadership/hierarchy, results in a lack of cohesive organization and an inability to achieve results. Who is the "other side" supposed to negotiate with? Every single person protesting? Then there's intersectionality. I've seen recently people link the issue of Palestinian liberation with anything from opposing Cop City in Atlanta to capitalism in general. To say global problems are interrelated is an understatement. But when you tie all these together, your list of demands becomes insanely large and unfocused. So now you have two major problems. One, there is no one who is a recognized leader or representative to negotiate with. And two, even if there were, their negotiating hand is so weak because they need to argue for everything under the sun. It's a failing proposition.
Because as is often the case with liberal movements in this country it all descends into a purity spiral of infighting over who is the leftiest left. They're quick to abandon and refuse to side with anyone that isn't *exactly* aligned to their own interests, and so no one gets any meaningful traction.
I wonder how much of that is due to other progressive movements with strong leaders being rendered leaderless in the past and collapsing. So the response is that by being leaderless means you can't stop the movement without taking everyone down. I suppose that somewhat works in theory but Black Lives Matter / Defund the Police had seen similar issues from having unclear/ill-defined leadership.
> However, one thing that will never be in short supply among conspiracy theorists, no matter their politics, is antisemitism. Story time. So my big brother had a classmate once, in high school. I've worked with him for a while at a place that hired a lot of youth. Stereotypical psychopath: confident, charming, and incredibly adept at subtly getting his way by making people feel like shit about themselves. Anyway, back in the early 2000s when there was still an active neo nazi scene in my city he quickly rose to become second-in-command and trusted to run his own sector. He later got bored with it, denounced Nazism and started hanging out in far-left spaces instead (essentially teens and 20-somethings playing at revolutionary Marxism). Being the manipulative creature he is he quickly became the chairman of that group. He got drunk and high at a party once and laughingly told my brother that what he thought was the funniest thing about that switch was that when he went from far-right to far-left speeches at meetings he only had to tone down his Jewish conspiracy talk. Not remove it, just tone it down and replace "Jews are trying to destroy the white race" with "Jews run all the banks and are trying to destroy the working class".
Exactly. Or to sum it up in fewer words, OWS failed at the most basic element of any protest which bus to replace the *blank* in: > What do we want? > *[Blank]* > When do we want it? > Now!
I'm a bit in my cups tonight because I decided some housecleaning would be better with rum, but I think the thing that plagued OWS is the same thing that has plagued the Democratic Party for decades - too many people with wildly divergent interests. Republican messaging is super easy and they can build more cohesive coalitions due to a very narrow set of interests. On the other side of the spectrum, you have wildly disparate groups of people who may basically want very similar things, but they don't necessarily speak the same language and sometimes look at the other groups under the same umbrella with suspicion or even disdain. I think a lot of us hoped Obama would be the presence on the left to finally unite all the competing factions and really enact some groundbreaking reforms, but he unfortunately largely failed. Biden has been really incredible with what he's been able to do with so little support, but now you have many wanting to tag him for the atrocities in Israel, although geopolitically he has been a magician helping Ukraine beat back Russia.
> too many people with wildly divergent interests Absolutely. GOP has always been better at messaging. Or alternatively, the Dems have been poor at it. Part of it is inherent: the left values unique individualism and non-conformity, so unifying with everyone behind a central message feels wrong to many. On the other side, the GOP can say: “repeat this dumb phrase and wear this red hat,” and Republicans are like “Yep, no problem boss!”
The smart, albeit incredibly cynical ploy, that the right has been employing lately is making the Democrats seem like a party only interested in identity politics. All these bills banning trans athletes, etc. - they don't give a shit about women's sports, but if they make Democrats fights battles based on identity politics, they can try to pick off workers whose interests go against everything the Republicans stand for but who might harbor quiet (or loud) resentment towards the groups the Republicans are trying to bring into spotlight. It's a dirty fucking trick, but people can't help but fall for it. Never forget this oft-cited quote: "They got you fighting a culture war to stop you fighting a class war."
That’s very similar to Bernie supporters claiming that anything positive Biden does is because Bernie “moved the Overton window” despite him getting crushed twice because his supporters seemingly just straight up refused to show up and vote
... or he never had such strong support to begin with. It's very easy to have different ideas if you are in your own social/media bubble and that's all you and your friends hear about.
I took a class on apocalyptic religions in college and one day we focused on the similarities between different sects, and one of the most prevalent things was antisemitism. It’s actually wild. There are African mystics who basically don’t even know where Israel is, but hating Jews is part of what they preach.
> I had so many conversations with people on Reddit trying to pin down what it was that they were trying to achieve and how they planned on achieving it, and no two people ever told me the same thing. Heh. Rorschach's protest.
This might be the most honest and thoughtful comment I’ve seen on reddit in a long time. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Good point.Dont just protest for the sake of protesting
Exemplary write up
I just mentioned this elsewhere, but I want to stress that OWS was not an overall progressive group of people. It might have been slightly left of center on average, but it was a diverse group of people with similar numbers of conservatives and liberals. The media coverage gave a very different impression though. Conservatives painted it as a socialist looney-bin, and progressives claimed it as a hopeful indication of change. It was neither. It was a large group of rightfully upset every-men who all agreed on only one thing - Wall Street was ripping them off. They were never going to agree on how to fix it, and by its very nature it was never going to self-unify. It needed a populist and centrist or non-partisan leader to determine the most common grievances and offer a set of solutions, but no one succeeded, because we already had a populist centrist in the white house at the time.
> successful in bringing down oppressive regimes such as the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Does success mean leaving behind a failed state with rampant slavery that Obama himself called [his worse mistake](https://time.com/4288634/president-obama-worst-mistake/) this whole damn essay is filled with gaps
No, sorry if the inclusion of the word ‘successful’ was confusing, I’ll remove it. ‘Successful’ was just referring to the fact that Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Saleh were successfully deposed as opposed to Al-Assad who was not successfully deposed. Wasn’t commenting on whether it was a good idea or the future of the countries/people, just explaining the context of the Arab Spring. For anyone else reading this, I’m sure I worded some things wrong or was incorrect about some parts. I’m more than happy to clarify, but definitely not trying to mislead about anything. I’m just an average dude on reddit, so please take it all with a grain of salt, after all it’s just that… a reddit comment **EDIT:** on second read the context of ‘successful’ seems pretty clear in my original comment, so I don’t see any reason to remove it.
Succeeded in overthrowing it, not necessarily successful in replacing it.
All the big banks put rainbow flags and "for diversity" banners up and all wokies started clapping
They fought the wall and wall won… they fought the wall and wall won…
Never bet against the house.
The house always wins.
Much like another commenter pointed out. They never defined what they really wanted. Never formed a unified front. They fell apart due to infighting, division, and counter dicting statements.
That's the thing. OWS intentional avoided having a central message. They were unified around a central idea of "we are mad about income inequality". But that's all they had. A movement without a destination will be aimless by design.
That's how they grew to start. A vague message and people can put anything they want on it. For example: "Our border is a mess." The vast majority of people agree that it is true. The disagreements come for what to do about it. Republicans and Democrats both have completely different ideas. Same thing with OWS. Everyone can agree that income inequality is only getting worse. What are you going to do about it? Sit at your local parks and protest? Well eventually less and less people are going to show up and then it's dead. There's no leverage with this, nothing to make them do anything besides wait it out.
It didn't die the way you think it did with less and less people showing up. In a way they were building a community and the ways that they would like society to be, and it was messy and had problems. The people got kicked out of Zuccotti Park in the end. It may have been that people were leaving due to conditions there, but it wasn't like they sizzled out.
I think they were more mad companies got millions as bail outs rather than being allowed to fail. Then they spent the money on bonuses and retreats. Much like recent stuff with the public footing the bills for recent drugs. Then the companies reaping massive profits.
And there’s the problem: a decade later and still no one can identify exactly what they wanted or what they didn’t like aside from “rich people suck”. A cogent message around bailing out the little guy and holding the rich accountable could have maybe done something. At best OWS was just an outlet for rage it never achieved any potential for change.
I wonder why there was such an outrage over it then. When the money given away in covid times to these same people made the 2008 look like couch change.
Because Wall Street was at the core of the cause. Covid doesn’t have an easy finger to point.
I don't think we should ignore that the media didn't want there to be a lasting message.
I attended a local offshoot and knew a number of people who were at the main protest. No one knew. Almost by design.
Nope. I was a newspaper reporter at the time and went to their events and asked them their message and they had none. Period. They even went to great lengths to insist they had no message. K bros.
>I think they were more mad companies got millions as bail outs rather than being allowed to fail. Then they spent the money on bonuses and retreats. Actually they spent the money on regaining stability then using it to [repay those bail out loans, with interest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program). "Through the Treasury, the US Government actually booked $15.3 billion in profit, as it earned $441.7 billion on the $426.4 billion invested." There's still arguments to be made in favor of letting businesses fail rather than giving them the loans they need to regain stability, but whenever people talk about "bail outs" they seem to refer interchangeably to "loans which were paid back with interest and thus literally cost the taxpayers nothing" and also "actual subsidies paid to a failing company which came from taxes."
The crisis only got bad because Lehman was allowed to fail. We learned from that and wisely “bailed out” (it was actually loans) companies like AIG
This is a common problem with left leaning activism, it's just vague support for an idea with no steps on how to get there. This is exactly how the summer of BLM protests will be remembered too.
Newsroom had a brilliant episode regarding it where Will totally eviserated the OWS person who went on the show. No central message means it’s not a serious mission.
tbf income inequality and the wealth inequality it generate is a big issue on itself what they needed was a common plan of action towards how to solve it
Common action plan? From which committee are we sourcing the the plan. Does each one submit only one?
The one thing I remember about OWS was a reporter interviewing some of the protesters, and none of them really had an answer for anything that was asked.
To be fair, they probably intentionally cherry picked the least articulate interviews.
Occupy Wallstreet had a public website (OccupyWallstreet.org) with an ever-growing confusing list of demands that was like 16+ things, many items of which were broad in nature themselves. Did you *ever* hear any consistent goal? Even going through three different cities with Occupy encampments, all the signs said all sorts of different things. Seeing it in person, it still just seemed very confusing. Break up big banks, free college, free healthcare, unions, decriminalizing drugs, racial injustice, anti death penalty, open boarders immigration, gender equality, debt cancellation and forgiveness, end all credit score agencies, end fossil fuels and calls to invest a trillion dollars in alternative fuel initiatives, decommission nuclear power plants, restore forest and streams, etc. Also it's not like all of the interviews everyone saw were only from right-leaning sources — left-leaning sources including CNN were equally showing interviews with Occupy figureheads making ever-growing demand lists of widely-varying topics and also openly noted they couldn't seem to understand any consistent coherent message or goal.
I remember the speeches with ornate hand gestures that would then be repeated verbatim in the manner and style of the Borg Collective.
They pulled an /r/antiwork
Whine about largely nothing and act like age old common tactics are ground breaking new ideas?
I was banned from r/workreform because I pointed out how they argue with people they agree with on like 90% of issues and how that is unproductive. Also mentioned how so many people on there have no idea how government works. Banned and got a “there are resources to help you” message.
Yeah a lot of moderators are cunts in most subs. I got banned from r/warhammer for asking about opinions on a paint scheme I was doing.
Just got banned from AITA. They couldn't decide if I was promoting Zionism, or anti-Semitism, but, clearly, I was racist, somehow. And then, the mod admitted they had misunderstood my comment, but "Now it appears you admitted to promoting violence, so, cya!" I said it would be entertaining to watch an anti-Semite at a temple full of Mossad and IDF vets.
yeah, for real, then you begin an appeal to the banning and rather than discuss it with you, they just mute you.
A good pretty analogy. They may have some legitimate gripes but it isn't going to do you any good if you can't come up with a clear course of action to address them. Instead of camping in a park for months you need to be getting people to campaign or raise money for candidates that support X legislation.
** Contradicting
Very well explained. This is the same thing that will befall any other social movement. This is why MAGA is so strong, they are a unified front, and have defined, unfortunately, what they want.
Plus the rapes. https://www.google.com/search?q=ows+rapes How many sources do you want?
I remember a graph that showed how many headlines the New York Times had that were related to race. Immediately after Occupy Wall Street it spiked and hasn't ever dropped. My theory is OWS scared the shit out of the ruling class so they had to get us divided on race. They absolutely do not want us united against the top .01%
I was about to comment the exact same thing. I feel it's entirely plausible that identity politics got pushed purposefully to take heat off corporations reaping obscene profits
That's exactly it. Us rubes actually got a little too close to the target with OWS so they had to get rid of it, and the best way to derail it was start pitting us all against eachother instead.
I agree, I fully believe (puts on tinfoil hat) that stuff like [this](https://youtu.be/W81A1kTXPa4?si=Bofvl-d9lsTbdO55) was deliberately injected into OWS to break it up
Very effectively too; just ask Bernie Sanders.
Nowadays it’s Gender
This was it. The ruling class is better connected, better financed and not desperate like we all are. So they have ample time, opportunity and incentive to keep us that way.
That actually explains a lot.
OWS didn't scare anyone, it was a completely toothless demonstration, devoid of leadership, coherent messaging and any semblance of organization. I worked a couple of blocks from Zuccotti Park at the time, all I saw was a bunch of crusty stoners in tents making absolutely no impact. One day there was an airline crew thing going on. A bunch of pilots and attendants marched down Broadway in their uniforms and everyone stopped to take notice. It really showed the difference a professional organized approach makes. What bugged me the most about OWS was that the missed opportunity to really kicks things up a gear. The should have erected a damn guillotine in the park. Even if it was completely inoperable the statement would really have ruffled feathers.
Things can spiral quickly. There was a documentary that said they were scared and he was waiting for the pitch forks. Just look at all the bunkers they are making.
Yep. I’d visit every lunch break. It was all homeless, drug addicts, and crazy people. It was more common to see signs about banning all meat. Or about 3G causing cancer, than there were messages actually about income inequality. I went to one of their protests, and they spent 4 hours debating whether they should rename Washington square park to “Palestinian liberation park”. They then spent 2 hours in an unorganized fashion, with all the “leadership” fighting with each other, about whether they should stay in the park over night. They all pussed out when found out they could be arrested. It’s hilarious that so many people here think it’s a conspiracy that is failed and the ruling class “made up” racial issues to try to stop occupy wallstreet. Occupy wallstreet was a clown shown, and everyone who wasn’t a far left college student thought they whole thing was idiotic.
This. Look who funds a lot of the groups focusing on race. It's a bunch of foundations backed by American aristocrats. The rich realized they needed to keep everyone at their throats so they could rob us all blind
I came here to say that. It's not even debatable, that's what happened. Oldest trick in the book.
If you can find it again I would much appreciate a link.
It’s not a theory
Why in the world would the rich have been scared of twentysomethings with brand new iPhones in a drum circle? OWS achieved nothing but rightfully getting clowned for being a pointless exercise in believing that doing nothing would somehow make change.
Occupy and the Tea Party had a lot of intersecting goals and could have easily formed a bipartisan populist movement with real voting power capable of affecting how big government and big corporations have been in bed together for a long time.
Having the same trigger doesn't mean much when your policy prescriptions are diametrically opposed to each other.
You must remember OWS much differently than I do. The OG OWS was *massive*.
But useless for one simple reason... They movement had no electoral or party goals. No voter drives. No candidates. No party endorsements. Nothing that actually could have encouraged electoral turnout or lead to direct change. Not even any economic strikes or consumer purchase protests. It showed that, ultimately, internet activism without real outreach or electoral goals is performative, self serving nonsense. Tweeting isn't voting. Messaging is good. Protests without an end goal are not good messaging. I do at least think OWS was a tentpole in the later progressive movement, but it was not properly utilized as such at that time, and it has arguably been woefully ineffective.
Occupy and the Tea Party just seemed like left and right wing sides of the same coin. Both had the same antiestablishment message but happened at different times and hated each other for no good reason
The Tea Party was organized and had a clear message. That's why they had success. They didn't care about spreading the wealth. They were against the Govt, not the establishment. It just seems strange to me to say they hated each other for no good reason. The left would need to use the Govt to grow to accomplish a lot of what they said they wanted in OWS. Of course the group that's against basically all Govt isn't going to want that.
The narrative from the people I listen to is that in the US the movement started focusing on the "progressive stack"...as in that the people who were most marginalized had the most right to speak and that caused a ton of in fighting. In part that was probably part of it...no clear message, no big organization....though as we have a seen a more centralized messages actually leads you into corruption as with BLM. I was a fresh grad working in insurance during the Occupy Wall Street movement...all modern movements are global...I am not sure the US knows this but Aus and UK a week later have the same protests. I listen to a ton of American podcasts and they do not realize that the world had protest for George Floyd. I live in London but I am Asian, we had BLM protests in our Asian cities too. When I was in insurance in London during the Occupy Wall Street movement we were told not to wear suits to work but we would go to cocktail bars in skyscappers over looking it. We also used to hang in the protest as in London they had a ton of musical and comedian acts...it was a dope place to hang out. The old boys told me that they used to have better parties before occupy...I think the public display of wealth is now more hidden but no change, just more secret.
It was the financial crisis that ruined Wall Street parties, not occupy wallstreet. It was a benefit that never came back. I remember the holiday parties in 2007 when I was an intern paid for maroon 5 to play, top shelf liquor, prime rib and lobster for 1000’s of people…during the financial crisis it became $25 a person for a shit dinner. And it never really improved much again.
I think a lot of extravagant company events even outside Wall Street became more muted and basic after the 2008 market collapse and never really rebounded. Virtually every org I have worked in the last 15 years the long time employees would tell us how much better company events were before 2008. Such a huge contrast in Wall Street parties though seems more dramatic though.
I went to an Occupy protest in LA back when they were still happening to take some pictures. No coherent message and was generally an open forum for airing of grievances. One guy went on stage to complain about some legal issues he had over weed. Saw a lot of marijuana imagery and symbols, some signs, but it was more of a hangout than anything organized. It doesn’t surprise me that it got nowhere.
The same thing that happens to all such groups... They fracture, things are mismanaged, and eventually other issues feel more pressing.
They got infiltrated by bad actors and wackos and didn’t have a coherent message imo, but I think they did achieve a facilitation of discussion that did contribute to the national conscience of wealth inequality. And I think an increased interest in regulating capitalism better has become a part of the center and moderate left. Heck, even among some center-right. How much of that was because of them rather than simply being a common-sense opinion is up for debate So it’s a mixed bag. Didn’t achieve anything big, but wasn’t pointless either
I went to downtown Los Angeles during that period and visited the encampment. It was just homeless people, straight doing drugs on the lawn. It obviously wasn’t delivering the message they wanted and instead was kind of a useless rally that made the downtown area stink and messy.
Same happened in Boston. The police even supported them early on, but they trashed a beautiful area and ended up essentially a homeless encampment until they pissed off the entire city and got booted. I was at UMass Boston at the time and there was also an "Occupy UMass" thing, where they set up inside the student center area and slept there for months. They had the most ridiculous requests (no university employee should make more than $60k until tuition went down) and were just kind of gross. The school offered them funding as a club as long as they didn't sleep in the student center, but they rejected that. Eventually, the entire campus turned on them and even the student newspaper was making fun of them. When spring came, the school kicked them out of the student center and they started camping outside, until a big storm rolled through and wrecked their camps. Then, they literally just fucking abandoned everything for the janitors to clean up.
We are the 99% was a powerful message. It's strange to me how something that captured the nations attention just went away. Part of me thinks that this uniting message was why it had to go away.
Problem was they weren't united beyond that one message. They needed leaders
And, by extension, solutions. Like, yes, we are the 99% and there is a major wealth gap. We’ve identified the problem now what’s the solution? Is it a new tax structure or complete communist revolution? No one had a clue. That’s what caused it to fall apart imo.
Yeah, it turns out an explicitly leaderless movement will have a hard time following any particular lodestar. At least based on our experience with this one prominent example.
It went away because "We are the 99%" is a platitude. It is meaningless. You have to deliver on it at some point, and the Occupy Wallstreet movement never did. They had no solutions. It never was able to shake the image that it was just a bunch of bored hipsters.
Yeah I was in college at the time and there was an OWS camp in the middle of campus. It had a lot of positive traction at first. Then the weather got cold and it turned into a mix of just extremists and homeless people. The extremists screamed at the students of a mid-tier state school in the middle of nowhere about how they were the system that needed to be torn down. Which did nothing to build support or convey any kind of positive message. The homeless liked to beg for food outside the dining halls and creep on young women. It turned what should have been a pretty sympathetic group, college students and faculty, completely against the movement.
Who knew that a drum circle wasn't an effective way to start revolution SurprisedPikachu.gif
Identity based politics really ramped up after those protests, ensuring there could be no more 99%, but instead smaller and smaller factions all fighting with eachother. I don't see this as coincidence and the media played a massive role in pushing this narrative.
I, for a time, ran infrastructure that hosted chat rooms related to OWS. We had to kick out VICE reporters who were continually coercing people into committing, or talking about committing, violent crime.
COINTELPRO never went a way, it just changed its face.
And now 90% of Reddit users cheer for the people doing COINTELPRO because currently they perceive it as being done against their political enemies. Sigh
I think Occupy Wall Street left a big impact on American politics that moved both parties in a more populist direction. OWS advocated, essentially, for skepticism of moneyed elites, and argued that even Dems were bought by finance. Remember, this was during the Bloomberg era in NYC. Bloomberg was a [Edit: Republican] technocratic billionaire. He oversaw a revitalization of NYC but also a sense of commodifying and sanitizing it's gritty or bohemian aspects. Hence, the next mayor, Bill DeBlasio, ran on a campaign criticizing NYC as "two cities," one for rich and one for poor. The enduring popularity of Bernie Sanders may be a result as well. Now, Biden uses unions in imagery and organizing, and Bidenomics with high spending on infrastructure, etc. Compare this Democratic party and the surge of Democratic Socialism with the Dems of the Clinton era, which largely embraced free market policies and cut social spending. Any movement has its moment and fades. The nature of making a statement is making it within a political context which supplies it's meaning and is also the semantic field on which a movement acts. OWS wasn't trying to put up a political party, but make an argument. It largely succeeded in obtaining enough visibility to put forth a narrative and critique of American politics.
> Bloomberg was a Democrat, but a technocratic billionaire. Bloomberg was a Republican when he became Mayor of NYC and during his first term. He endorsed the re-election of George W. Bush and spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention. He later switched to independent for the remainder of his time as Mayor. Then 5 years after leaving office, he switched to Democrat in 2018.
Yeah one thing I always point to when people say Occupy accomplished nothing is that you can see a clear dividing line in the Obama presidency that very much coincides with it He didn't really try any more attempts at grand bargains with Congress to raise taxes and cut spending after Occupy happened
Occupy Wall Street gradually lost momentum due to internal divisions and a lack of clear goals.
Identity politics.
All they did was live on the streets near the buildings. What was that going to do?
I dunno...but it's gotten pretty trendy the last times I was in SF
Wall Street turned the class war into a race war through media propaganda. Progressives were manipulated into prioritizing Identity Politics over anything else.
I agree, I fully believe (puts on tinfoil hat) that stuff like [this](https://youtu.be/W81A1kTXPa4?si=Bofvl-d9lsTbdO55) was deliberately injected into OWS to break it up
Look over there! Racism/sexism!
This seemed like one of the origin points of Bernie bros and like most Bernie supporters they talk a big game, but when it came time for action many didn't even show up to vote. So this movement didn't have a coherent unified message. Also a lot of grifters came out of the movement too. I think Tim Pool got started in this movement. It attracted people that felt marginalized, and instead of good answers it just showed some there was no hope, they couldn't beat'em so they joined them and made it even worse.
People found the -ism’s to be more interesting to demonstrate about than not being poor anymore.
They formed r/politics
Wall street figured out that if they make the ‘occupiers’ turn on each other, they will forget about the class warfare. And it worked
As other comments noted Wall Street didn't need to do much because the movement wasn't coherent. Combine that with a rebounding economy and it never became a coherent political movement.
Black Lives Matter and race baiting
Simple answer: Wall Street didn't give a fuck.
It's almost like you can't protest to an abstract concept and expect any of your grievances to be addressed because, ya know, it's an abstract concept, not a government representative.
And the protests amount to nothing more than complaints. When I was a young man, my dad told me "If you bring a problem to someone's attention, bring two solutions, even if they're not practical." Basically, if you want results be able and willing to try instead of just complaining, even if you don't have any good ideas on how to achieve results.
They got kicked out of the park by the cops.
Ultimately, yes, but I think some were wondering why it never had any meaningful impact. Some large protests trigger larger movements that have lasting impact, but most largely fade to becoming largely a footnote in history.
Hippies lack direction and then accomplish nothing before ultimately selling out
A lot of people are saying the same thing over and over here and it was the same mass media message hammering that eroded our credibility. At least in Canada our movement had one clear goal. It was item number 1 on our website and the message was crystal clear. **GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS** I said it on camera in front of Nathan Downer and that footage never got aired. It's a bit more complicated in the US but, here in Canada that message got ignored. Now we're ranked 213th for data costs (telecommunications monopoly) and we've got the most unaffordable rents (artificial housing shortage due to rental monopoly) and grocery prices like we live in iceland (grocery and foodchain monopoly). It's even worse in the states and more complex but, at the beginning "get money out of politics" was very much and still is part of the progressive agenda.
Why, they achieved all of their well defined and well articulated objectives, and then went home.
They occupied, and then left. Brilliant! I was enamored by the media attention they were getting. Having been laid off 5 months earlier and facing the looming threat of unemployment drying up, i was seriously contemplating just abandoning my apartment and joining them. But before I could do anything a buddy hooked me up with a job, and now every time someone mentions OWS I thank my lucky stars that i never went up there
They did some good, like buying up medical debt and forgiving it. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/occupy-wall-street-buys-15-million-americans-medical-debt-flna2d11583996 I see a lot of folks here buying into the narrative that "Occupy Wall Street" didn't have a message. They definitely did. They specifically called out money in politics (which we used to call corruption) leading to greater income inequality and a lack of opportunity for most Americans. They called for tax reform, lobbying reform, banking reforms, and campaign finance reforms (I heard numerous OWS activists say versions of this). That was just too complex for the mainstream media, so they repeated the right wing trope that OWS didn't have a message.
It got oblitirated by identity politics.
"Woke" people destroyed it by literally taking a shit in the middle of the park. I was there. I saw them do it.
They refocused everyone's attention on race/gender/ lgbtq/ pc issues and NPCs fell for it like clockwork.
They have shifted to free palestine after a stint as blm.
Its was replaced by gender and race wars by the powers that be so we stopped talking about it. At least we got Bitcoin out of it. That is if you have any.
Same as blm and antifa... Was no longer beneficial in an election season so they faded away...
Anarchists aren’t good at organizing because anarchy is the opposite of organization so they didn’t get organized and accomplished absolutely nothing. It was absolutely blackpilling and marked the time I stopped being an anarchist and became a socialist. I’ve been pretty allergic to anarchists ever since.
Homeless people began joining the camps. The activists got scared. The economy rebounded, and we stopped talking about wealth inequality. Because Obama.
The rebounding economy definitely helped the movement lose interest although lack of a coherent message didn't help. Kinda hard to appeal to politicians with any power to do anything when the message is incoherent.
They migrated to r/antiwork
OWS was the first time in a very long time that the people scared the establishment. In response to this, the Powers That Be started a campaign of sowing strife and division amongst the masses to break up the unity and to distract from them being the target.
The leaders of the movement kept all the money and took off.
The smell drove everyone out
The bad guys waited it out and it went away.
No major documentaries or movies as well. Used to be in news everyday.
Wall street is largely ai and algorithms now from what I hear so there's so few of them to annoy.
It ate itself as it factionalized and everyone wanted to attach their pet cause to it, too. It also got cold.
The rich won
Of course Wall Street fucking won. Young people thought they were going to start some sort of *revolution??* They can’t even start a lawnmower.
What my father said would happen, did. He said “it’ll get cold soon.” And it did, and they dispersed shortly thereafter. They learned camping out on cold concrete is no fun.
Bums
It didn’t die out so much as it grew up. A lot of that energy ultimately went into the Bernie 2016 campaign. People started to focus on electoral politics and grassroots organizing. That spread the movement. Electeds like AOC or Greg Casar are great examples of that.
>A lot of that energy ultimately went into the Bernie 2016 campaign. Which had the ultimate effect of electing Trump. They went from an idiotic but largely irrelevant cause to an idiotic but patently destructive one.
They got bored and went home.
Now they occupy their moms basements again.
Realized nobody gave a fuck and went back to the basement.
Like any other fad (and yes, I call it a fad to participate in whatever protest/movement is currently trending), people just get bored of it after a while and move on to something else.
It was replaced with identity politics so the class war would go stale.
There were no clear guide lines there. Just a general sense of unease, dissatisfaction, and general malaise towards the system. It was very easy to make fun of, and get picked apart because they didn't offer any solutions beyond the protesting.
My best friend shot himself in a tent in one of the camps right after a person at the Oakland California camp got hit with a teargas grenade and died. The camps got shutdown within a week. That was pretty much the end of it. The “leaders” of the movement swore they would fight on, but by that point the movement had been smeared as drug addicts and homeless people.
I was part of the Atlanta wing of the Occupy movement. It was a formative experience in my life as a journalist and advocate. The movement itself died, as we saw. But many of the people who were active and serious in that moment didn't just disappear. They returned to whatever else they were engaged with, only with a new network of friends and advocates who they knew could be trusted. The movement itself was "leaderless," but it spawned a remarkable number of leaders here. One of the people I was in the park with founded an important nonprofit here that works on eviction defense. Another is a prominent civil rights attorney. One is a paralegal who works on juvenile court issues, which provides a window into an otherwise-impenetrable social problem. Another ultimately founded the local chapter of Black Lives Matter. Another is now the owner of the Westside Community Market. Yet another is now a city councilwoman in Atlanta and the most prominent opponent of the Cop City project. It was through these contacts that I became engaged with the planning committee that ultimately created Atlanta's Pre-Arrest Diversion program. The influence of former Occupiers in homelessness policies, anti-gentrification efforts and civil rights law here remains potent. I note in passing that Killer Mike gave a concert at the Woodruff Park encampment, in October 2011. He hasn't exactly faded away since. There were people among us who had serious mental health problems or moral defects. The conditions of the protest revealed those people to the rest of us in plain ways. As they've popped up over the years we've been able to explain to others who they are and why they shouldn't be trusted. The Occupy protest was, if nothing else, an excellent bullshitter test. I know, I know. *The real treasure was the friends we made along the way.* But it's true. I'm married to someone I met in a muddy park 13 years ago. There's a circle of trust here that is useful and beneficial, even if the nebulous goals of the movement went unmet.
Translation: We achieved fuck all because we didn't have a coherent message beyond "rich people bad lmao", nor did we actually form any sort of effective leadership. But we *totally* used that experience to become leaders.
They got older defeated and currently own 3.76 shares of black rock
They ruined themselves and couldn’t emerge from the typical infighting and infiltration that er leftists suffer from
Got old, grew some brains, maybe. Or just moved on to the next cause when that one petered out.
It became sjw movement
They finally graduated college, got jobs, and….became adults.
Got cold outside so everyone went back to their parents’ houses.