Well it’s not a revolution yet, but the #OccupyWallStreet movement is certainly generating a lot of interest.
It was a surprise to me that the origins of the movement were actually in Vancouver, where Adbusters publisher Kalle Lasn and his friends brainstormed on the idea that occupying Wall Street could bring attention to the depth of resentment about wealth inequity in the world. Reading this article in The Tyee, it is clear that Lasn has both a clear thought about what the movement could demand (a one percent tax on financial transactions) and a sense that there never was a guarantee that this thing could work.
It is a complex world and small interventions can make a difference. Nothing is guaranteed, but there are a few characteristics of #OccupyWallStreet that are worth pointing out. If an idea like this is to propagate and spread it requires a few key things to take it beyond a brainstorming session:
An invitation.: “To me it was a sublime symbol of total clarity. Here’s a body poised in this beautiful position and it spoke of this crystal-clear sublime idea behind this messy business. On top of the head it said, ‘What is our one demand?’ To me it was almost like an invitation, like if we get our act together then we can launch a revolution…There’s some idea there, and the power of it comes from the fact that most of the time you’ll never be able to answer what it is. It’s just there. It’s just a magic moment that you can feel in your gut that it’s there, and you’re willing to go there and sleep there and go through the hardship and fight for it. Once you start answering it too clearly then the magic is gone.”
What is our one demand? The poster above is not a manifesto, it is an invitation to co-create, to show up and deliberate together. While Lasn has an idea, the process is important.
Connectivity. “We have a network of 90,000 culture jammers who are tuned into us at various levels. The biggest brainstorms happened between myself and Adbusters senior editor Micah White, who lives in Berkeley. We were the two key people who got excited, and more and more excited, morning after morning, and eventually decided on that hashtag, #OccupyWallStreet. When we launched that hashtag, the twittering came on so hard and fast that it drove us. We suddenly said, ‘Hey, this could actually happen.”
Adbusters has a massive network of people who are in constant communication with each other. Such a network makes it possible to share and propagate ideas, and ensures that the medium for transmitting the idea is already in place. If you have to build a network to get your ideas out, you a already behind the times.
Sponsorship.. “I’ve felt like this all my life and even though I’m kind of an old guy now, I must admit age doesn’t seem to come into it. I feel like this is the first time in the 20-plus year history of Adbusters that we really have a chance to pull something off, and it’s we. Let’s face it, most of the people, probably 90 per cent of the people camping out on Wall Street are young people, and even though I’m not sleeping there I still feel it’s we. It takes old people like me and theoreticians like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who are writing for our next issue, and people like David Graeber, the anarchist, and Saul Newman, the guy who recently wrote a book about anarchism. It takes all kinds of people to launch a revolution, but the cutting edge is young people who put their asses on the line.”
Kids get together all the time. But without patronage and sponsorship, and in some cases the protection afforded by a piece of open and private land in the middle of Manhattan, nothing can go very far. The powers that be may yet crush this whole thing, but it is currently more than an idea, and as power begins to not just endorse, but actually support the movement, its chance for survival increases.
A light plan with few expectations. “It has grown beyond anything I thought was possible in the early days. The mood changes every day, and this realization that all of a sudden it’s a nationwide movement in the United States and now it’s even creeping into Canada. That’s — what can I say? It’s beyond anything I imagined early on. I’ve been sort of running with it day by day, and now it feels like anything is possible. It’s a good lesson for me. I’ve always been reticent and careful and doing a lot of planning and stuff. For me personally it’s told me, don’t hold back. Just go for it. You never know what’ll happen.”.
A concrete strategic plan with a fail safe strategy is too rigid and brittle for this work. In order for self-organizing behavior to have a chance, you need to step back and let things unfold as they will. And if it fizzles, let it go. But if it works, throw everything you have at it to keep it going.
A shared purpose aligned with the times.. “The most remarkable thing that inspired me, when I first started looking at the original videos that first started appearing on Russian TV, and other videos that were made, and they went up to people in Zuccotti Park and asked people, I just couldn’t believe how articulate and how tuned in these people actually were. I’d gone along with this feeling that a lot of the political left is just a loony left, and there’s a bunch of granola people running around saying, “We want to overthrow capitalism,” and that sort of stuff. Here we are brainstorming, trying to come up with slogans, and all of a sudden they were spontaneously saying things in the street that inspired me. They said it better than what we could come up with in our brainstorming sessions! That told me that maybe the political left isn’t as loony as I’d been thinking for the past 10 years. Maybe there is a spark of revolutionary fervor there after all.”
This is not a diffuse love-in. There is a clear purpose at the core of this work and that is to address the economic and social inequalities that plague the world. The time for analysis is over. We know what the problem is. Even those who clamor for the movement to be clear know deep down that the protesters are right about something. You can sense it. There is a need and the movement is providing a focus for the despondency that many people feel. This is not a small issue that only a few people can relate to. The 99% is real, and invites each of us to find our own relationship to the core. And isn’t it interesting that some of those celebrity journalists that are decrying the movement are actually part of the one percent, or very close to them?
A view of possibility. “I know it sounds kind of grandiose, but it seems like on Nov. 3 and 4, when the G20 meet, it is possible to have millions of people marching around the world, all demanding one thing. And we believe that one thing could be the Robin Hood tax. The Tobin Tax, what we’re calling a one per cent tax on all financial transactions. And this could be a tipping point moment where we the people tell our politicians and our leaders what we want to happen to our economy, rather than having to listen to their bullshit about shall we have a stimulus or shall we not, or shall we do this or shall we not. Let’s slow down fast money with a Tobin Tax, and we feel that over the next one month we may be able to instigate a global movement where the young people of the world stand up and say, ‘We want to have a Robin Hood tax.'”
This is not aimless. This is action that is undertaken with the idea that something is possible. A tax on financial transactions – slowing down fast money – is brilliant. It slows the flow, and doesn’t hurt anyone, and it addresses the revenue issue faced by almost every country on earth. It’s possible, it’s relatively straightforward and it might work. Who can’t get behind that?
Reading Paolo Coehlo’s fable The Alchemist:
“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”
Douglas Rushkoff has a useful article on the Occupy movement. I am actually loath indulge in much analysis over what is happening in New York and now elsewhere, because the events defy analysis, especially from a traditional lens. But in this article, Rushkoff points to some of the things that are happening and why they matter for organizing large social conversations on the pressing issues of our day.
To be fair, the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped.
Let’s be clear. Many traditionalists and establishment people are pointing to the form of these protests and dismissing them. It’s as if the protestors have a responsibility to come up with a list of demands in order to be taken seriously. Or it’s as if they are not to be believed until they create a reductionist analysis of the problems.
After Copenhagen I had a clear idea that mainstream ways of organizing the conversation on the biggest issues of our time were outdated. The conference model is a waste of time, money and talent. Diplomacy is too constrained by 19th century notions of statehood to be useful. What needs to happen is a sea change, a worldwide open space in which voices and questions can float freely, and actions can arise that address things in completely novel and emergent ways. If the form of this movement is mind boggling, don’t ask the protesters to change for you. You will never understand it unless you change your way of thinking about how we create solution.
via Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it – CNN.com.
It’s been a week since I was in New York City visiting the camp in Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Park) where the Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing.
I was struck mostly by their process, but also by the earnest and deliberate attention that these people, young and old are giving to the chance they have to open discourse on the big issues of wealth disparity and social equity in America.
When I was there earlier in the week they were engaging in a participatory process to create their demands. It was as much about defining why they were there as anything else. But the fact is that many people are gathered there and supporting the occupation for various reasons. Mostly it is to draw attention to the vast disparities of wealth in the United States and the effect that is having especially on the poor and otherwise marginalized. There was a lot of conversation going on there last week within the group as well as between the group and the Wall Street workers. Surprising amount of joint discerning about what is really going on in America.
What is interesting about the movement there is that they eschew leaders of any kind. This is a traditional anarchist approach, and it’s being put into practice quite deliberately. There are many facilitators who are helping the group to decide themselves on what to say and do and so far the group has been very clear about non-violence and is even actively discouraging vandalism. I was in one meeting of the outreach team who were reporting on the controversial debate taking place about whether to mark subway maps with the local of the protest. in general, the group there wants to be very careful not to give the police any reason whatsoever to become violent with them. So they are staying away from anything that might be construed as violence or damage and are instead focusing on powerful speech, using their first amendment rights to talk about and explore what they stand for and what the issues are. There is no presence of the Black Bloc or other masked militants who have brought the wrath of the police state reigning down on protests here in Canada in recent years.
And there is is no clear single agenda, because the totality of the problems facing the USA cannot be summarized with a pithy statement of demands. They are not hijackers and they are not holding anything ransom. They are trying to figure out how to discuss and actively represent the malaise and serious economic, social and political issues going on in the USA systemically and accurately. So much of this analysis and practice lies outside of the mainstream of American thought and debate that it is hard to say it all without seeming crazy. But the USA is coming apart in fundamental ways – even the Wall Street folks don’t dispute the fundamental economic analysis – and standing for possibilities is hard, hard work right now.
It is inspiring to watch them in General Assembly, where twice a day they work through an agenda of decisions using “the people’s mic” as their amplification system. The police have banned megaphones of any kind and so they speak to the crowd by repeating what the speaker has just said. This has the double effect of ensuring everyone can hear as well as bringing a quiet shared tone to everything. It is slow and orderly discourse. When the general Assembly isn’t meeting, the place runs in a big general Open Space – type gathering. Anyone who wants to call a session calls out “mic check!” and everyone within hearing distance repeats the phrase. When enough people are paying attention, an announcement is made, a time and place chosen and the group goes back to work. It is beautiful to watch.
All people are going to have to challenge themselves to reach across divides if there is any hope of finding solutions to the current and looming crises. At Wall Street many protesters and many bankers were willing to do just that and many many conversations are happening there between suits and sleeping bags. Very little anger at all. They set the bar high for civil discourse despite looking scruffy.
Back in transit after two weeks on the road. I had two short nights and a day at home to recharge, see the kids, take in the Vancouver Whitecaps BC Place opener against Portland and try to kick this cold/cough.
Things are busy right now. Most of my work is with faith based organizations, including several United Church of Canada congregations who have engaged me to work with them mostly around finding new levels of engagement within their congregations, or in collaboration with others. I am teaching a lot, on Art of Hosting teams in BC, Ontario, and next year Ireland and Utah. I’m back at SFU on Friday teaching Open Space and World Cafe in the dialogue program there. One of my students from last year had a nice article published about her work using Cafe to open up civic conversation in her town of Oak Bay. That one day course, taught once a year, continues to have interesting results.
By far the biggest piece of work I’m engaged in right now is with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. We are hosting 12 conversations around the United States using the concept of “welcome” as a basis for the organization to reexamine their mission. We are using Cafe as way of exploring ways of belonging and we are engaged with Cognitive Edge to do some significant story gathering and analysis to understand how people’s experiences of welcome can be used by LIRS to discern new strategic patterns.
It’s exciting and interesting work and timely too. We have a lady held two conversations in Philadelphia and Fargo and we are heading to Tampa and Tucson in the new year. Yes Tucson. And I’m hoping we can go to Alabama too at some point so we can dive into the work in the hardest places to do it in the US.
On top of all of that there are little bits of work here and there, an extended piece on addictions related stigma in the health system and a house full of school going children, which is a new pattern for us. I want to blog more and reflect, and I’m just trying to find the time to do so.
Location:Air Canada 142 (YVR – YYZ)