Groups within the Occupy Wall Street movement are trying to overhaul the banking system and even dream of creating a new kind of bank.

Occupy isn't in the headlines so much these days, but work continues behind the scenes. The Alternative Banking Group of Occupy Wall Street meets weekly in different places. Members are older than some might think — in their 30s, 40s and 50s — and many work or formerly worked in the financial industry.

"We have almost no consensus opinion, except that the system is not working," says Cathy O'Neil, who often facilitates the group that is working on legislation and regulation to reform the financial system. "A lot of these people are from finance or have a background in law or SEC regulation. There's lots of people from banks and hedge funds."

She herself was a quant — a quantitative analyst at a hedge fund. She even worked with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers for a while, but she got disillusioned. Within the Alternative Banking Group are smaller groups working on specific projects. O'Neil talks about their plans for a mobile app to help people move their money away from large banks.

"It would show you which credit unions you're eligible for, which is a big obstacle for people," O'Neil explains, "where the ATMs are in your neighborhood, what kind of paperwork you would need, and what the investing philosophy of that credit union is and what their services are."

This group also wrote an article in the Financial Times about former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman's plan to deal with banks that were "too big to fail." The group members hope to get President Obama and the GOP candidates to take the issue seriously.

'Pretty Radical Stuff'

Another group wants to create a new kind of bank. One of the facilitators of the Occupy Bank Working Group is former British diplomat Carne Ross. He says it's amazing that the banking system is so broken that some people in finance share the concerns of people who were sleeping in New York City's Zuccotti Park — the heart of the Occupy movement.

"To the extent that actually we're talking about setting up an alternative system, that's pretty radical stuff," Ross says. "And the fact that you have Wall Street bankers, former regulators, hedge fund traders, as part of that project, I find pretty striking."

There is always lively discussion. Jerry Weinstein, a writer, wants the new bank to help educate people. "How do you get people to spend within their means, to save, to make better choices about not being surprised about a balloon loan?" he asks.

Elizabeth Friedrich works for a trade association of credit unions. "The communities I work in, low-income communities of color, [are] completely underserved and underbanked, and I think that's part of the target market we're looking for in this bank," she says.

A couple of times a week, Occupy Wall Street has a Spokes Council where decisions are made by consensus. Each working group sends a representative.

"I'm Carne from the Occupy Bank Working Group, greetings to you all," Ross says to a group of about 60 people in the room at one of the meetings. "We're not common attendees at Spokes."

A Democratic Bank

Ross makes a presentation about how this new bank, if it existed, would fulfill the values and ideals of Occupy Wall Street. "A bank that would be democratic, that would be owned by its employees and by its customers; it would be transparent, it would follow banking practices that did not expose the broader economy to systemic risk," he says.

And ultimately, the dream is a national bank. Ross believes that if you change banking, you change the whole nervous system of the economy. But he realizes it's a tall order to take on the banking system. The regulatory obstacles are huge, and failure is very possible.

The Occupy Bank Working Group is inspired by innovative financial institutions like the ShoreBank. Started in the 1970s, it was once the largest certified community development financial institution in the U.S., but it failed during the financial crisis.

At a weekly meeting, members of the group try to hammer out a news release. They want to acquire or partner with a bank. One of the founders of the ShoreBank, Mary Houghton, is on the phone from Chicago. "Is there a third option in which you buy a substantial stake, but you don't control the bank?" Houghton asks.

The group is looking to partner with or acquire an existing financial institution to create the Occupy Bank — democratic, transparent, accessible, competitive — but it shouldn't maximize profits over everything.

The group is now discussing structure, and a survey of what people in diverse communities want and need. But so far, no partner has knocked on the door.

Learn More

Occupy Our Food Supply

In just over a week’s time, thousands of people will descend on our food system by participating in a Global Day of Action to Occupy our Food Supply. Prominent thought leaders, authors, farmers and activists like Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Annie & Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, Raj Patel, Gary Paul Nabhan, Anna Lappé, Marion Nestle, Food Inc.’s Robert Kenner and Michael Ableman are adding their voices in support of a wide-ranging series of actions across the US and the globe.

Occupy Our Food Supply: Create/Resist Reportback

From Occupy groups to mommy bloggers, a broad spectrum of people responded to Occupy our Food Supply’s call to resist corporate consolidation of our food systems and create socially and environmentally just local solutions. The massive participation shows that this is an idea whose time has come: We must get big food giants like Cargill and Monsanto out of our food system

How To Occupy Cargill

We invite you to join us in standing up to Cargill, a global agribusiness giant touching every aspect of our food from farm to fork. United, our food movements can reach the scale required to challenge Cargill’s corporate food regime that has prioritized profit over health and sustainability for decades.

Undesired Consequences of the Industrial Food Complex

The connection between deforestation-related emissions and agricultural expansion is well documented. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agriculture and deforestation account for roughly one third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Take for example, the rapid expansion of three globally-traded agricultural commodities into tropical rainforests: soy, palm oil and cattle.

Read more: Occupy Our Food Supply | Rainforest Action Network http://ran.org/occupy-our-food-supply#ixzz1qNAVqPzo

Anonyous
Occupy Vancouver, March 12, 2012

The following report was submitted by a member of an Occupy group that will remain anonymous. The process outlined may help occupations everywhere.

IN HER RECENT article, “Mad, Passionate Love—And Violence”, Rebecca Solnit refers to the initial rush of collective excitement felt by activists worldwide as Occupy’s ‘honeymoon’ phase.

She was comparing the early days of the movement to the golden glow of the energy we feel when we first fall deeply in love with another, but few of us had ever experienced such passionate love for all of humanity. With encampments springing up everywhere, I think most of us not only felt this way, but experienced it simultaneously as a transnational ‘honeymoon.’

We also recognized, with uncanny synchronicity. our common concerns. This was due, in no small part, to the wide array of electronic communications available, which brought the pain and joy of people around the world right into our hearts, along with their hopes and dreams—which we discovered to be so like our own.

As we viewed the mini-documentaries of indie film producers like Ian MacKenzie and Velcrow Ripper, and read the provocative articles of authors such as Sara Robinson and Rebecca Solnit, the creative energy unleashed by the Occupy Movement continued to permeate the planet’s collective consciousness.

Image after image and word after word, it was clear that we we were participating in something that, while still nascent, was changing the trajectory of civilization as we know it. In the process, in ways still being imagined and transformed, this knowledge was transformed into actions.

These actions were natural catalysts for Occupiers to link up with people from other encampments and groups they were working with. This cross-fertilization of imagination and creativity is still going on and may prove to be one of the Occupy movement’s greatest strengths. But while the honeymoon phase is clearly past, internal conflicts within and between groups remain a problem in many places.

It is for this reason that some of us who have witnessed and/or been part of these conflicts want to document one possible intervention method that we know is workable, because we were part of it.

Our particular disruption occurred when we were all very much caught up in the honeymoon phase of the movement. We were confident there was no problem so great it could not be resolved by directing our seemingly boundless energy of love and compassion toward it.

Thus, when one site whose activities we had often been part of suffered a potentially serious setback early on, it took us all by surprise. We began to wonder if the patience, love, and compassion there was quite as boundless as it appeared to be and certainly to the extent this occasion demanded.

Still, we believed the group possessed the collective wisdom to handle the situation at hand. The situation at which this intervention was targeted began with the arrival of a young man, fictitiously named Donnie here, for purposes of this account (and with sincere apologies to any Occupier bearing this name by sheer coincidence).

Clearly, it is not our intent to defame any individual anywhere—only to return support given to the Occupy Movement everywhere, and hopefully help our fellow Occupiers by sharing a successful intervention for solving an internal conflict which could occur at any Occupied site. Moreover, this intervention was carried out in what little privacy public encampment allows, without physical violence, by members of a small, newly formed Occupy group.

MEET ‘DONNIE’

Around mid-November of last year, Donnie began coming around frequently, and though he claimed to be part of the Occupy Movement, he was clearly not aligned with any of the basic goals. Continuously disruptive of General Assemblies, he shouted foul and vulgar epithets when anyone disagreed with him, threatened to hit people, and could not be reasoned with by anyone. His behavior damaged the new encampment’s solidarity and appeared to be driving away those whose support Occupy was trying to enlist.

As time went on, in addition to his unpredictable disruptions, it became apparent Donnie was using the encampment to freeload food and donations intended for persons in dire circumstances. Unlike many at the encampment, he had a place to live, his own transportation, and appeared to be well fed and clean.

In short, Donnie was obviously a person whose basic living needs were met. To be fair, he did occasionally help keep the camp clean, and could even be amiable when he thought it would get him what he wanted. But he generally did this only with certain persons—usually women—who originally came to the encampment to get involved with Occupy actions.

Moreover, he had no sense of discretion, and often approached women in a manner deemed sexually harassing by Occupiers of both sexes. It was soon apparent to most everyone that his foul moods and vulgar epithets had driven away many people from this newly established site, especially families with children, who otherwise might have supported the Occupy movement. It needed supporters very much at the time, as there was a lot of suspicion about Occupy when it first began. Most thought it too good to be genuine, even when sites began cropping up everywhere—even the mass media was astounded at how quickly Occupy Wall Street in New York spread to Main Street USA, and often in the most unlikely places.

Donnie also had not responded to numerous discreet suggestions from peers that he stop his inappropriate behaviors. At the time, not many in this area realized other Occupy encampments were having similar problems.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

We received a suggestion to read Sara Robinson’s ‘Occupy’s A**hole Problem: Flashbacks from An Old Hippie‘, and all of us at our camp gratefully did so. The group’s resolve was confirmed by Robinson’s statement that “It is absolutely OK to insist on behavior norms in Occupied space.” This cut right to the heart of its internal dispute.

The conflict of values involved in dealing with destructive energy for a movement based on an unwavering commitment to actions grounded in love and compassion is obvious. What was needed was a way to resolve the moral aspects of this dilemma. Robinson went on to describe a ‘restorative justice’ process in which the entire group, or a large number empowered to speak for the group, confronts the disruptor in an intervention process. No shame or blame involved.

One or two persons point out what they have seen, how it has affected them, and then the disruptive person is given a choice: make specific changes in the problematic behavior, or else leave. She recommends some pre-organizing in terms of who will do what: spokespersons who will do most of the talking, make factual “we” statements reflecting group observations, while the rest of the group stands in a circle around them, saying little or nothing but showing collective strength and resolve.

Robinson explains the entire process in detail, so this is just a brief recap that confirms its value. The Occupy group followed through to the letter, and even added a list of additional Occupiers from other sites who agreed to be called by those living at the encampment should things get out of hand. They would come to the site immediately if the intervention began going sideways.

Donnie was, after all, a person who had threatened violence if he did not get his way, and his numerous temper tantrums had caused most of the group to avoid contact with him whenever he was present at the Occupy site.

TAKING CARE OF ANGER

It was also recommended that those participating in the intervention should review the short film with Michael Stone, to ensure they had taken care of any personal anger toward Donnie prior to confronting him.

This was another useful tool, as this process needs people with the calm demeanor that only comes from a deeply felt inner peace—from people who have ‘taken care of their anger.’

THE INTERVENTION

Donnie had established a schedule by then that seldom wavered. Since he did not sleep at the encampment, he was never there after nightfall. So the intervention was scheduled to take place in the late afternoon, when the street traffic past the encampment was at a minimum and most people had left for the day.

Donnie was told a group representing the General Asembly wished to speak with him at a specific time the next day about his refusal to comply with a short list of behavioral norms it had adopted by consensus. As Donnie was not present at the GA when this list of guidelines—all of which were simply common sense—was unanimously agreed upon, these were put into writing. Copies were distributed to all persons who had missed the meeting—including Donnie, thus eliminating the likelihood he would use the excuse that he did not know he was doing anything wrong.

As the group gathered for the intervention at the scheduled time the following day, it was hardly a surprise that this disruptive individual did not arrive, and though they waited all day, he avoided the site for the rest of the week. When he finally did show up again, it was very late at night. Most of the intervention team sleeping onsite that night had gone to bed in their tents, while the others taking part in the intervention had gone home.

Uncertain how to proceed, given this entirely unexpected turn of events, but also unwilling to take Donnie on with only a handful of the intervention team present, one of the founders of the encampment made a spur-of-the-moment decision that all supported later. He decided it was preferable to show compassion than try the intervention when no one was prepared for it to happen in the middle of a cold and rainy night, after being awakened from their sleep.

In short, he told Donnie, who was sitting on the ground shivering from the rain and cold that he could sleep the rest of the night in an extra tent that happened to be vacant that one night. While Donnie at first refused, wanting to demonstrate what a ‘tough guy’ he was, after sitting for a short time with no protective gear in the freezing rain, he accepted the offer and climbed into the sleeping bag in the vacant tent. He never did explain why he had returned in the middle of the night, but the group suspects he thought they would change their minds about him if he just stayed away for a few days.

PLAN B

After more than two months of the group protesting his obnoxious behaviors with increasing emphasis on how damaging it was, he still just did not ‘get it,’ or so he claimed later.

The Occupiers then decided to put into effect what they now call Plan B, which was to forego the restorative justice intervention, since it was obvious he would never be there at the same time as the intervention group. Donnie was asked to attend the next General Assembly and explain his reasons for not complying with its unanimous proposal, which was that he leave the camp, and not return to the space they had Occupied. He did show up for the GA, but stolidly refused to explain himself.

Instead, he just asked, over and over again, what ‘they’ wanted him to say, as though that would change their minds and they would allow him to stay. It went precisely as Robinson’s article predicted, with Donnie having an endless string of excuses, all boiling down to him being a persecuted victim without whom the entire Occupy Movement would collapse.

The Occupiers at the site did really well in deflecting his bogus excuses and claims that certain people in the group had a ‘personal grudge’ against him. Nonetheless, he finally hit on one that bought him a short amount of time. While the entire GA had agreed he must be told to leave Occupied space for good, Donnie was not present at the meeting where this specific proposal concerning him was passed.

In the end, everyone agreed that if he would stay away from the encampment for the rest of the week, they would give him one more chance to explain why he had ignored the collective decision of the group. They said he could come to the next GA to explain why he should be allowed to stay. In other words, he was given a ‘graceful out’ and he took it. No one has seen or heard from him since.

THE AFTERMATH

A great deal was learned from this experience, which can be briefly summarized as:

1. The damage a single disruptive individual can do to a group of highly committed and experienced activists should not be underestimated;—just one can drain the enthusiasm and energy of fifty people in less time than it took to document this incident;
2. We are never alone in this struggle—there are numerous resources in many forms to guide us through the darkest times—many of whom have gone through similar experiences; and
3. Whatever intervention you come up with, these clever persons will always find a way to sabotage them—so always be prepared with a ‘Plan B’.

With love, gratitude, and in solidarity with all of you, especially our friends atOccupy Love.

- The Morningstar Collective
morningstarcollective@gmail.com

Things Fell Apart

By Eric Blumrich
The Bollard, March 8, 2012

photo/The Fuge

Occupy Maine began with a noble ideal that I supported (and still support) wholeheartedly. I was among the first people to show up at the October 1 initiation of Occupy Maine in Monument Square. When the group moved their camp to Lincoln Park, I was a volunteer librarian and helped in every other capacity they required of me. I have supported Occupy Maine with food, supplies, and hundreds of dollars out of my pocket — money that was needed at home, but was donated because I believe the cause to be noble and important.

But the Occupy Maine camp quickly degenerated into a living example of serial, pathological irresponsibility. In doing so, it became an embodiment of the negative caricatures so favored by the far right — something not worthy of anyone’s support.

How did this come to be?

When the occupation moved from the square to the park, I continued to drop by with toilet paper, Moxie, and whatever cash I could offer. Within a week, the camp had become quite a mess — but, damn it, it was a campsite I had helped pay for, and I still supported it.

At the time, the group’s nightly general assemblies were still being held in the square. Many of those attending the meetings hadn’t been to the camp and were unaware of the sorry state of things. Likewise, some campers had never attended an assembly. So it was decided that the assemblies should take place in the park.

At first, it worked out wonderfully. Within 48 hours, the camp had been cleaned up and organized. Assembly attendance doubled. Occupy Maine had become a refutation of the Fox “News” narrative that Occupy camps were dens of drug abuse, rape, and murder. People were proud of what they were building. When the first storm came along and leveled the entire camp, the next day saw the building of stronger, more permanent structures. It was really quite inspiring and exciting.

As the community swelled to include not only those who were active in the Occupy movement, but also the homeless, I accepted it. The homeless population in Portland needed support. If Occupy Maine could provide services for the homeless that were superior to those offered by the city, it made OM look good. It proved we were organized and conscientious members of the community that were not only interested in making a statement, but also in making the community a better place. Many of the homeless campers returned the favor by assisting with camp operations and procurement. It was evolving into a mutually beneficial situation.

Unfortunately, there were still problems with the camp: food and supplies were always in short supply. The single port-a-toilet was overused to the point of being irrelevant. Small incidences of violence had been cropping up, reports of illegal drug and alcohol use within the camp were becoming more frequent. Security was always understaffed. Meanwhile, only about a third of the people residing in the camp were attending the general assemblies. Nearly all of the problems were being created by non-attendees.

Something needed to be done, and initially it seemed that the camp was willing to take action. A “zero tolerance” policy regarding the use of illegal drugs and alcohol was adopted. More importantly, it was decided by consensus that if an individual was residing in the camp, consuming supplies and receiving services, that individual was required to attend the nightly meetings.

The mandatory attendance policy would have either eliminated or delayed the problems that eventually led to the death of the camp. It showed that the occupation was willing to take responsibility for itself.

I was unable to attend the following day’s meeting, due to work, but I was able to drop by the day after that and was quite surprised to see that the assembly was even smaller than the one at which the two policies had been adopted. “Why are there so few people here?” I asked those assembled. “I thought we had reached consensus that all camp residents were required to attend G.A. meetings. I can see there are many people here in the camp who aren’t in attendance.”

I was then told something that made my jaw drop, and still confounds me to this day: “It was decided that we are a movement of autonomous individuals, and as such, no one has the right to require that anyone do anything.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then the “zero tolerance” policy concerning illegal drugs and alcohol is meaningless,” I said.

Much to my astonishment, my statement was greeted with nods and smiles. I was told that Occupy Maine considered itself to be an absolutely open and free community, in which people were to be trusted to do the right thing.

Other occupations in cities all across the country had instituted loose rules and codes of conduct. These other occupations had rightly come to the conclusion that without some regulation through consensus things would soon fall apart. The camp was already experiencing incidents that proved that trusting everyone to do the right thing was just foolish.

In adopting this patently insane concept that “autonomous individuals” had no right to institute even the basest of rules, Occupy Maine had turned its back on any concept of responsibility.

• A member of Occupy Maine assaulted someone? Well, that person is an “autonomous individual” — we had nothing to do with that.

• A member of Occupy Maine was caught with cocaine and heroin? Well, that person is an “autonomous individual” — we had nothing to do with that.

• A member of Occupy Maine was defecating in public? Well, that person is an “autonomous individual” …

The mind reels at the utter, stubborn ignorance that went into this line of thinking, and we saw the results. After a few weeks, 75 percent of the people staying in the camp refused to attend general assemblies or participate in any of the actions Occupy Maine organized. They were just there to take advantage of the free food and shelter. These people were allowed to stay and take whatever they wanted from the limited supplies since they were “autonomous individuals.”

Despite all of this, I continued to donate cash and supplies, attend assemblies, and spend hours every day organizing and cleaning the library. (I now realize this was just for show, since I never did witness anyone actually reading a book there.) I continued to defend the camp long after the point at which it had become a hindrance to the movement, rather than an asset.

I was there at the City Council meeting when Occupy Maine’s permit request to remain in the park was debated. I’d intended to just help fill the benches, but wound up at the podium defending the camp. I pointed out that Lincoln Park had always been a dodgy area, and said that the camp had helped make it a safer place.

Within a week, my opinion had shifted 180 degrees.

During visits to the campsite in the following days, I saw people still in residence who had instigated violence and violated the “zero tolerance” drug policy — people Occupy Maine claimed had been expelled from the camp. When I asked why these campers were still there, I was told once again that they were “autonomous individuals” and, as such, were not subject to anyone’s dictate.

I began to feel ashamed and, quite frankly, cheated. I began to care less and less about the camp, since it apparently cared so little about itself.

The following weekend, Occupy Maine held an open house event to demonstrate that they were still there and had no intention of leaving. As I approached the park, I saw a guy in his 20s walking the perimeter of the camp and holding a club spiked with nails. He was screaming, cursing and threatening to “kill everyone in the park.” He was unhinged, clearly mentally ill.

Giving this individual a wide berth, I entered the camp and started asking around. “Hey, we have a person walking through the camp, voicing his intent to commit murder and brandishing a weapon that could easily do the job. Are we going to do anything about that? There are families and kids in the camp, and today was supposed to be the day we show off the camp as a safe environment!”

The answer? Well, you’ve probably guessed it: “As autonomous individuals, no one in the camp has the right to dictate to this person.”

Even more insulting, I got the impression that many in the camp thought their tolerance of this clearly murderous behavior made them oh-so-special. They were practically patting themselves on the back for allowing this person to threaten families and children!

To say I was disgusted would be a gross understatement. That was one of last times I ever went to the camp. The next time I met with City Councilor Dave Marshall, I found myself wanting to apologize for defending the camp at the City Council meeting.

A few weeks ago, I visited the camp one last time. The cumulative effect of so many violent and unacceptable acts had rendered the site more uninhabitable than anything the surprisingly mild winter weather had done. The camp was pretty much deserted. The problem had solved itself in a rather sad way. Even the library had been gutted — most of the books had apparently been stolen by “autonomous individuals.”

Beholding this depressing sight, I felt no animosity toward the homeless people and hangers-on who had created so many problems for the camp. After all, they were people in desperate situations, just trying to survive. Rather, I felt a bitter anger toward those who, motivated by a stunning naïveté born of childish idealism, refused to care enough about a camp that so many had put so much time and effort into building.

When Occupy Maine lost its legal challenge, I shed not a single tear, nor wasted a moment indulging in resentment or regret. The camp had become a stain upon the Occupy Movement.

I walked down to Lincoln Park as the last remnants of the camp were being removed, and encountered some of the occupiers who’d been so adamant about the concept of “autonomous individuality.” According to them, nothing that had transpired was the fault of Occupy Maine. It was all the fault of those “evil cops” and, ultimately, City Hall was to blame. Even as the camp disintegrated before their eyes, these people were stubbornly unwilling to accept a shred of responsibility.

We cannot get confused and believe that the camp equals the movement. Occupy is, and always has been, much larger than a campsite. The cause of Occupy is still noble and incredibly important. The movement has already changed the political discourse in this country, and will continue to do so in the months and years ahead. It will be an exciting and wonderful thing to see. I look forward to being a part of it.

Eric Blumrich lives in Portland.

This is an incomplete reveiw of the accomplishments of Ocucpy, but interesting to see Associate Press giving the movement some credit.

Associated Press
March 22. 2012

NEW YORK — As spring approaches, Occupy Wall Street protesters who mostly hibernated all winter are beginning to stir with plans for renewed demonstrations six months after the movement was born.

The global protests against corporate excess and economic inequality are generally thought to have begun Sept. 17 when tents sprang up in a small granite plaza in lower Manhattan. The movement has lost steam in recent months, with media attention and donations dropping off as Occupy encampments across the country were dismantled, some by force.

On March 7, the finance accounting group in New York City reported that just about $119,000 remained in Occupy's bank account — the equivalent of about two weeks' worth of expenses.

The Occupy movement has influenced the national dialogue about economic equality, with the word "occupy" itself becoming part of the public lexicon. In his third State of the Union address, President Barack Obama issued a populist call for income equality that echoed the movement's message. But has anything really changed in the past six months?

Some achievements that can be connected to the efforts of the Occupy movement, and some plans for the near future:

WHAT GOT DONE

In Albany, N.Y., Occupy protesters dubbed Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo "Gov. 1 Percent" for his refusal since the 2010 campaign to agree to a millionaire tax, and because his major campaign financial support comes from corporate executives.

Cuomo tried to evict Occupy Albany from the park co-owned by the city and the state. But the Democratic mayor, Gerald Jennings, agreed to allow Occupy Albany to stay on the city-owned side. Local Democratic District Attorney David Soares also announced he wouldn't prosecute anyone for disorderly conduct at Occupy Albany who might be arrested by state police — who answer to Cuomo.

In a surprise, Cuomo reversed his position on the millionaire tax in December to avoid further cuts to schools and health care. Part of the $2 billion in revenue went to a modest but rare income tax cut of $200 to $400 for most middle class families. Cuomo refers to the millionaire tax as the biggest tax cut for the middle class in decades.

Democratic lawmakers attributed Cuomo's move in part to the Occupy protesters who had targeted him across the street from the Capitol for months and had begun demonstrating just outside his office.

___

An Atlanta pastor, whose church struggled to pay its bills after its building was struck by a 2008 tornado, credits Occupy Atlanta with helping it to avoid foreclosure. The Rev. Dexter Johnson's church, the Higher Ground Empowerment Center, took out a loan to rebuild and has struggled to pay its mortgage in recent months.

Johnson said the bank had agreed to work with the church to help pay its mortgage after demonstrations by Occupy members. Demonstrators had set up a camp at the church in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood, just west of downtown.

In January, Johnson learned his congregation would be allowed to stay in the building.

___

In Rhode Island, Occupy Providence pushed for — and won — a temporary day center to serve the homeless during the winter. Protesters made the center's opening a condition of their departure from a public park downtown, where they had camped against the city's wishes for more than three months.

While the city didn't fund the center, officials pledged to help its operator, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, find money for it.

"It shows that with pressure from people, a government can be made to move," protester Robert Malin said at the time of the center's opening.

The city had threatened legal action to remove the protesters and their tents from the park, but the two sides instead went into mediation before a judge.

___

Also in Rhode Island, the state's junior U.S. senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced a bill in November to crack down on high credit card interest rates — the same week he visited the Providence encampment. While there was no direct relationship between Occupy and the bill, Whitehouse spokesman Seth Larson said Thursday, the legislation no doubt resonated with the protesters.

"It was timely, and I'm sure the Occupy folks appreciated this bill," Larson said.

Whitehouse had introduced similar legislation a year earlier.

___

Occupy protesters helped save an Iraq war veteran's home from foreclosure in Atlanta, the Huffington Post reported. "I strongly believe Occupy Atlanta accelerated the process and helped save my home," Brigitte Walker, whose home activists began occupying Dec. 6, told the website. "If it had not been for them standing up, I probably wouldn't be having this happy ending." Walker had left Iraq in May 2004 when she was injured by the shock from mortar rounds, the Post reported.

Occupy Minneapolis also worked with community organizers to help a former Marine who faced eviction from his home strike a deal with his bank, the Post reported.

WHAT'S NEXT

Occupiers in New York City will commemorate the six-month mark with a rally Saturday in Zuccotti Park, where protesters camped out for months until the city ousted them in November.

Organizers are hoping donations will start to flow in as protests begin anew this spring, including a global day of "economic disruption" on May 1.

And in some states, Occupy supporters are making forays into politics. Asher Platts is running for the state senate in Maine as a "Clean Elections" candidate. Platts, an activist who attended the protests last fall, is running on an Occupy platform.

In suburban Philadelphia, Occupy protester Nathan I. Kleinman is running a write-in campaign for Congress against four-term Rep. Allyson Schwartz in the Democratic primary on April 24. The 29-year-old said he never would have mounted a run without his Occupy experience. Kleinman withdrew from the ballot after a court hearing in which Schwartz's supporters questioned some of the 1,500 required signatures he had gathered to appear on the ballot.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia, Michael Gormley in Albany, N.Y., Erika Niedowski and David Klepper in Providence, R.I., and News Researcher Julie Reed in New York.

In Oakland, the camp coincided with a significant drop in crime. But that wasn't the story we were told

BY REBECCA SOLNIT
TomDispatch, March 2012

 

Members of the Oakland Police Department arrest an Occupy Oakland demonstrator in Downtown Oakland, California January 28, 2012  (Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam)

 

When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them — or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.

Until they did.

Revolutions are always like this: at first all men are brothers and anything is possible, and then, if you’re lucky, the romance of that heady moment ripens into a relationship, instead of a breakup, an abusive marriage, or a murder-suicide. Occupy had its golden age, when those who never before imagined living side-by-side with homeless people found themselves in adjoining tents in public squares.

All sorts of other equalizing forces were present, not least the police brutality that battered the privileged the way that inner-city kids are used to being battered all the time. Part of what we had in common was what we were against: the current economy and the principle of insatiable greed that made it run, as well as the emotional and economic privatization that accompanied it.

This is a system that damages people, and its devastation was on display as never before in the early months of Occupy and related phenomena like the “We are the 99%” website. When it was people facing foreclosure, or who’d lost their jobs, or were thrashing around under avalanches of college or medical debt, they weren’t hard to accept as us, and not them.

And then came the people who’d been damaged far more, the psychologically fragile, the marginal, and the homeless — some of them endlessly needy and with a huge capacity for disruption. People who had come to fight the power found themselves staying on to figure out available mental-health resources, while others who had wanted to experience a democratic society on a grand scale found themselves trying to solve sanitation problems.

And then there was the violence.

The Faces of Violence

The most important direct violence Occupy faced was, of course, from the state, in the form of the police using maximum sub-lethal force on sleepers in tents, mothers with children, unarmed pedestrians, young women already penned up, unresisting seated students, poets, professors,pregnant women, wheelchair-bound occupiers and octogenarians. It has been a sustained campaign of police brutality from Wall Street to Washington State the likes of which we haven’t seen in 40 years.

On the part of activists, there were also a few notable incidents of violence in the hundreds of camps, especially violence against women. The mainstream media seemed to think this damned the Occupy movement, though it made the camps, at worst, a whole lot like the rest of the planet, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, seethes with violence against women. But these were isolated incidents.

That old line of songster Woody Guthrie is always handy in situations like this: “Some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.” The police have been going after occupiers with projectile weapons, clubs and tear gas, sending some of them to the hospital and leaving more than a few others traumatized and fearful. That’s the six-gun here.

But it all began with the fountain pens, slashing through peoples’ lives, through national and international economies, through the global markets. These were wielded by the banksters, the “vampire squid,” the deregulators in D.C., the men — and with the rarest of exceptions they were men — who stole the world.

That’s what Occupy came together to oppose, the grandest violence by scale, the least obvious by impact. No one on Wall Street ever had to get his suit besmirched by carrying out a foreclosure eviction himself. Cities provided that service for free to the banks (thereby further impoverishing themselves as they created new paupers out of old taxpayers).  And the police clubbed their opponents for them, over and over, everywhere across the United States.

The grand thieves invented ever more ingenious methods, including those sliced and diced derivatives, to crush the hopes and livelihoods of the many. This is the terrible violence that Occupy was formed to oppose. Don’t ever lose sight of that.

Oakland’s Beautiful Nonviolence

Now that we’re done remembering the major violence, let’s talk about Occupy Oakland. A great deal of fuss has been made about two incidents in which mostly young people affiliated with Occupy Oakland damaged some property and raised some hell.

The mainstream media and some faraway pundits weighed in on those Bay Area incidents as though they determined the meaning and future of the transnational Occupy phenomenon.  Perhaps some of them even hoped, consciously or otherwise, that harped on enough these might divide or destroy the movement. So it’s important to recall that the initial impact of Occupy Oakland was the very opposite of violent, stunningly so, in ways that were intentionally suppressed.

Occupy Oakland began in early October as a vibrant, multiracial gathering. A camp was built at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, and thousands received much-needed meals and healthcare for free from well-organized volunteers. Sometimes called the Oakland Commune, it was consciously descended from some of the finer aspects of an earlier movement born in Oakland, the Black Panthers, whose free breakfast programs should perhaps be as well-remembered and more admired than their macho posturing.

A compelling and generous-spirited General Assembly took place nightly and then biweekly in which the most important things on Earth were discussed by wildly different participants.  Once, for instance, I was in a breakout discussion group that included Native American, white, Latino, and able-bodied and disabled Occupiers, and in which I was likely the eldest participant; another time, a bunch of peacenik grandmothers dominated my group.

This country is segregated in so many terrible ways — and then it wasn’t for those glorious weeks when civil society awoke and fell in love with itself. Everyone showed up; everyone talked to everyone else; and in little tastes, in fleeting moments, the old divides no longer divided us and we felt like we could imagine ourselves as one society. This was the dream of the promised land — this land, that is, without its bitter divides. Honey never tasted sweeter, and power never felt better.

Now here’s something astonishing. While the camp was in existence, crime went down 19 percent in Oakland, a statistic the city was careful to conceal. “It may be counter to our statement that the Occupy movement is negatively impacting crime in Oakland,” the police chief wrote to the mayor in an email that local news station KTVU later obtained and released to little fanfare. Pay attention: Occupy was so powerful a force for nonviolence that it was already solving Oakland’s chronic crime and violence problems just by giving people hope and meals and solidarity and conversation.

The police attacking the camp knew what the rest of us didn’t: Occupy was abating crime, including violent crime, in this gritty, crime-ridden city. “You gotta give them hope, “ said an elected official across the bay once upon a time — a city supervisor named Harvey Milk. Occupy was hope we gave ourselves, the dream come true. The city did its best to take the hope away violently at 5 a.m. on October 25th. The sleepers were assaulted; their belongings confiscated and trashed. Then, Occupy Oakland rose again. Many thousands of nonviolent marchers shut downthe Port of Oakland in a stunning display of popular power on November 2nd.

That night, some kids did the smashy-smashy stuff that everyone gets really excited about.  (They even spray-painted “smashy” on a Rite Aid drugstore in giant letters.) When we talk about people who spray-paint and break windows and start bonfires in the street and shove people and scream and run around, making a demonstration into something way too much like the punk rock shows of my youth, let’s keep one thing in mind: they didn’t send anyone to the hospital, drive any seniors from their homes, spread despair and debt among the young, snatch food and medicine from the desperate, or destroy the global economy.

That said, they are still a problem.  They are the bait the police take and the media go to town with.  They create a situation a whole lot of us don’t like and that drives away many who might otherwise participate or sympathize. They are, that is, incredibly bad for a movement, and represent a form of segregation by intimidation.

But don’t confuse the pro-vandalism Occupiers with the vampire squid or the up-armored robocops who have gone after us almost everywhere.  Though their means are deeply flawed, their ends are not so different than yours. There’s no question that they should improve their tactics or maybe just act tactically, let alone strategically, and there’s no question that a lot of other people should stop being so apocalyptic about it.

Those who advocate for nonviolenceat Occupy should remember thatnonviolence is at best a great spirit of love and generosity, not a prissy enforcement squad. After all, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who gets invoked all the time when such issues come up, didn’t go around saying grumpy things about Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

Violence Against the Truth

Of course, a lot of people responding to these incidents in Oakland are actually responding to fictional versions of them. In such cases, you could even say that some journalists were doing violence against the truth of what happened in Oakland on November 2nd and January 28th.

The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, reported on the day’s events this way:

“Among the most violent incidents that occurred Saturday night was in front of the YMCA at 23rd Street and Broadway. Police corralled protesters in front of the building and several dozen protesters stormed into the Y, apparently to escape from the police, city officials and protesters said.  Protesters damaged a door and a few fixtures, and frightened those inside the gym working out, said Robert Wilkins, president of the YMCA of the East Bay.”

Wilkins was apparently not in the building, and first-person testimony recounts that a YMCA staff member welcomed the surrounded and battered protesters, and once inside, some were so terrified they pretended to work out on exercise machines to blend in.

I wrote this to the journalists who described the incident so peculiarly: “What was violent about [activists] fleeing police engaging in wholesale arrests and aggressive behavior? Even the YMCA official who complains about it adds, ‘The damage appears pretty minimal.’ And you call it violence? That’s sloppy.”

The reporter who responded apologized for what she called her “poor word choice” and said the piece was meant to convey police violence as well.

When the police are violent against activists, journalists tend to frame it as though there were violence in some vaguely unascribable sense that implicates the clobbered as well as the clobberers. In, for example, the build-up to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, the mainstream media kept portraying the right of the people peaceably to assemble as tantamount to terrorism and describing all the terrible things that the government or the media themselves speculated we might want to do (but never did).

Some of this was based on the fiction of tremendous activist violence in Seattle in 1999 that the New York Times in particular devoted itself to promulgating. That the police smashed up nonviolent demonstrators and constitutional rights pretty badly in both Seattle and New York didn’t excite them nearly as much. Don’t forget that before the obsession with violence arose, the smearing of Occupy was focused on the idea that people weren’t washing very much, and before that the framework for marginalization was that Occupy had “no demands.” There’s always something.

Keep in mind as well that Oakland’s police department is on the brink of federal receivership for not having made real amends for old and well-documented problems of violence, corruption and mismanagement, and that it was the police department, not the Occupy Oakland demonstrators, which used tear gas, clubs, smoke grenades and rubber bullets on January 28th. It’s true that a small group vandalized City Hall after the considerable police violence, but that’s hardly what the plans were at the outset of the day.

The action on January 28th that resulted in 400 arrests and a media conflagration