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Photos by Luke Thomas.<\/p><\/div>\n
By Christopher D. Cook <\/strong>(First published in SFPublicPress.org<\/a>. Republished with permission)<\/em> October 21, 2011<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re witnessing possibly the biggest left populist rebellion since the populist movement of the 1890s.\u201d<\/p>\n On a recent warm early morning in downtown San Francisco, veteran organizer David Solnit uttered those hopeful words amid a boisterous crowd of about 400 marching through the Financial District demanding banks pay for the economic and human costs of the home foreclosure crisis.<\/p>\n The Oct. 12 protest temporarily shut down Wells Fargo headquarters<\/a> on Montgomery Street, leading to 11 arrests as demonstrators from a coalition of labor and community-based groups, including affordable housing and immigrants\u2019 rights movements and the Occupy San Francisco movement spent five hours rallying to \u201cforeclose on Wall Street West.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the slogans and chants, what is this occupation movement about and why is it catching like wildfire? What do the growing ranks of Occupy Wall Street<\/a>\/San Francisco\/fill-in-the-blank hope comes of this tempest of progressivism?<\/p>\n Since a handful of protesters \u201coccupied\u201d Wall Street in mid-September to protest corporate power and economic inequalities, an international movement of sorts has risen up, with marches and encampments in hundreds of U.S. cities and towns and protests across the globe. Last Saturday, protesters in more than 900 cities throughout Europe, Africa and Asia rallied in sympathy with their American counterparts, The Washington Post reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like this in my life,\u201d said Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein<\/a> in an interview at the Wells Fargo rally in San Francisco. \u201cPeople are so excited to have a new tent in which to meet, and the possibility of it expanding limitlessly. Political courage is so contagious.\u201d<\/p>\n In a speech to the crowd, Klein said, \u201cThis is an incredible moment in this country. It turns out there is a lot of latent radicalism just waiting to be woken up. There are way more of us than we thought.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, not everyone is onboard. At the Wells Fargo protest, bank employees stood on the fringes of the boisterous rally waiting to get inside to work. Some expressed resentment that their entrance was being blocked. A couple of employees whispered their support for the message, if not the occupation of their workplace. Another said the protesters were \u201cmisinformed\u201d about the economy and should \u201cjust get a job.\u201d Some media critics have decried a lack of focus or coordination to the varied protests.<\/p>\n Culture of consensus<\/strong><\/p>\n But at the core of the Occupy movement, participants said, lies a democratic culture of consensus that is as important as any list of demands. Solnit, a veteran organizer who helped mobilize protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999, said the movement is \u201cvery horizontal and open, and they have created a space where huge numbers of people feel comfortable and have ownership.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not some board of directors or paid staff person running everything,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a process of direct democracy in the face of a failed democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n OccupySF participants hold general assembly meetings daily. Decisions are reached through consensus.<\/p><\/div>\n OccupySF protesters partcipate in literary readings and motivation speeches.<\/p><\/div>\n Numerous Occupy San Francisco backers said they were drawn by the chance to create a culture in which everyone could speak and be heard.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s leaderless, it\u2019s spontaneous \u2014 that\u2019s what I love about it,\u201d said protester Robyn Kralique, who wants to help create a \u201csacred, safe open space where we can discuss the possibilities together and actually have a say and democracy, even if it\u2019s just a block of people having free discussion and say about their politics. In America the average person doesn\u2019t get their say, because it\u2019s controlled by money.\u201d<\/p>\n Charmz Valentino, who came to the city for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and has since hunkered down with her dog at Occupy San Francisco, said, \u201cIt\u2019s so amazing that there is such a large range of ages, occupations and views, and we are all coming together to support our consensus.\u201d Asked how long she planned on staying, Valentino, 26, said, \u201cThis is an indefinite occupation, and I will be here indefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Weiss, a 33-year-old cafe worker who lives in San Francisco on \u201cminimum wage, plus tips,\u201d said he was inspired by \u201cpeople coming together, communicating face to face, sharing ideas, ironing out those ideas and deciding collectively what\u2019s in the best interests of all of us for the best possible intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n Grievances \u2014 and proposals<\/strong><\/p>\n Still, the question remains: What are those intentions? There is no single list of demands, but protesters have plenty of ideas about what is propelling the movement, and what they want changed. In dozens of interviews, their answers ranged from radical challenges to capitalism as a system to reformist proposals for corporate transparency and \u201cfair taxation\u201d of wealth.<\/p>\n The clarion call of \u201cWe are the 99 percent\u201d has driven home a blaring message about what protesters argue is a host of inequalities \u2014 of wealth, income, education, housing, economic opportunity, political clout, access to decent food and healthcare, and much more. Some protesters want to see corporate economic and political power reined in and others call for capitalism to be reformed, transformed or replaced. Proposals include enforcing existing regulations on corporate finance, breaking up corporate bank chains, creating a city-run municipal bank or expanding off-the-grid barter economies and alternative currencies.<\/p>\n Separation of corporation and state.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cA lot of things could be fixed if we provided free housing at every level, free education at every level, free health care for every level,\u201d said Valentino, whose puppy sported an \u201cOccupy SF\u201d button. \u201cI am not comfortable with the fact that the Federal Reserve<\/a> is owned by a private corporation. I would like to see that turned around as well. We need a big change in our financial institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Ken Tray, a teacher and union leader with United Educators of San Francisco, added: \u201cIf there is a clear message here, it\u2019s that there is a radical redistribution of wealth upward, and it\u2019s beginning to hurt people on the ground. I think the message is the rich have to pay their fair share and the public sector is something worth defending.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite working in a job \u201crelated to the financial industry,\u201d Mike, a clean-cut 40ish man who would not give his last name, joined the protests in front of the Federal Reserve building. \u201cBanks got priority treatment and the rest of us, the 99 percent, got the recession,\u201d he said, holding a sign at the corner of Market and Main streets. \u201cI\u2019m not against their existence, I\u2019m against the idea that we should be subservient to them. They should be serving us.\u201d Mike\u2019s proposal: \u201cI\u2019d like to see a strengthening of the regulatory environment to keep another recession from happening. The best way to do that is to break up the banks. I\u2019d also like to see a strong Volcker Rule<\/a> \u2014 make sure they can\u2019t use our money to gamble for their own profits.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what drew him into the streets, 52 year-old Francis Walsh, an assistant special education teacher from Daly City, said: \u201cIt\u2019s right here in the sign \u2014 end the wars, tax the rich, care for the people and protect the environment. Four simple ideas, not easy to do, but the simplicity of it and the message behind it is what brought me out here.\u201d<\/p>\n Walsh said he hoped for \u201ca steady building activism moving toward a more equitable society, moving toward a better redistribution of the goods and services that we have and the financial power that we have. The skewed finances that we have, popularized by the 1 percent controlling the 99 percent, is ruinous for all, and actually will be ruinous for the people at the top as well.\u201d Walsh said he did not know if his vision would materialize anytime soon, \u201cbut if people don\u2019t speak out, if people don\u2019t march, it never will.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Something completely new\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Many of the protesters called for something beyond reform. \u201cThe issue goes beyond our government is messed up,\u201d said Lauren Phillips, a 23 year-old San Francisco City College student who is taking time off from her studies because \u201cthere is traveling to be done, and revolution to make.\u201d<\/p>\n Phillips, who has been camping and protesting for weeks, said it\u2019s about more than just the economy: \u201cIf we don\u2019t have an environment to prosper in, there is certainly not going to be prosperity anymore \u2014 there won\u2019t be any people left to prosper if there is no environment in which to have health. That\u2019s why this thing is so big and so hard to define, why we don\u2019t necessarily have the answer of what to call it. I think it needs to be something completely new.\u201d<\/p>\n Calls by the news media for a unified policy platform frustrated many protesters, who said it would only narrow the discussion they are trying to open up. Some protesters pointed the finger at capitalism itself \u2014 arguing it should be replaced or dramatically amended.<\/p>\n In her speech in front of Wells Fargo, Klein argued, \u201cCapitalism destroys the systems on which it depends, it destroys the people who can no longer afford to buy its products, it destroys the rivers and the air. This is an insane model and it has to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Walsh, the special education teacher, said capitalism is undermining itself.<\/p>\n \u201cCapitalism is riven with contradictions,\u201d he said, \u201cand I think the contradiction that\u2019s going on here is, the more you skew the income and property ownership to a small number of people, the more the system actually ends up destroying itself. If the people at the bottom aren\u2019t well off \u2014 they don\u2019t spend money, they don\u2019t have jobs, they don\u2019t get the services \u2014 eventually that starts working its way up and starts eating away at the people who benefit at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Capitalism \u2018an unsustainable model\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cPlato,\u201d 24, a self-described \u201canarchist at heart,\u201d argued capitalism is \u201can unsustainable model because it depends on growth. It has to keep producing more value just to repay debt \u2026 exponential growth is unsustainable in a planet of limited resources.\u201d Like other younger protesters interviewed, he advocated alternative currency systems and new cultures of barter and sharing as a partial remedy.<\/p>\n Regardless of what \u201cism\u201d they endorsed, for many embracing Occupy San Francisco, the simple chance to speak their minds without media or political filters was a victory.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important thing is that the dialogue is no longer being controlled by the news,\u201d said Jason Ohdner, a nurse from Phoenix who came to help train street medics and support the protests here. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to let external forces decide for them which words are going to be bad words, so people are standing up and saying words like socialism, and they are not flinching.\u201d<\/p>\n Some spoke of a cultural shift that goes beyond lawmaking. \u201cI think what we’re trying to do here is more than just change a few laws and end the Fed, but at the same time create a new kind of culture and community where people love,\u201d said Phillips. \u201cIt\u2019s about bringing people back together in conscious community, practicing that and showing that it’s possible, that people can love and engage thy neighbor.\u201d<\/p>\n For Kralique and others interviewed, the movement goes beyond a list of demands.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are just so many demands, because there are so many crises going on right now that it\u2019s hard to boil it down to one cohesive statement,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t even think we should be forced to do that. We should be able to band together and discuss the possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nDesean Ricardo, a dread-haired rap musician who came from Pinole to protest along with his wife and baby daughter, explained: \u201cThe mainstream media keeps asking us for our list of demands, but that\u2019s kind of trapping the movement in a corner. They want to hear our fixes to the system, but the system can\u2019t be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n