Interactive Timeline to the Arab Spring

by Guardian

Final Outline

1. Introduction (precis)
1. History
2. Criticism
3. Consensus/People’s Assembly
2. Technology
1. Culture changing in general
2. “A few things happened...”
3. physical proximity
3. Occupy in the Information Age
1. What about Occupy speaks about the new age?
2. Comparison
1. Civil Rights Movement
2. Women’s Liberation?
3. Non-impact
4. Impact - communities
1. subcommittees
4. Conclusion
1. Final ideas about technology + culture

BACKUP - full (unedited) thesis

Part 1: Introduction

Protesters of the movement known as Occupy Wall Street (OWS) gathered in Manhattan’s Financial District on September 17, 2011. Encouraged by an eruption of social and political protests around the globe, Americans stood against what they felt were criminal activities of the financial elite that undermine politics and the economy. More specifically, Occupiers were fed up with corporate greed and influence in politics, social and class inequality, and the unaccountable corruption of giant banks. 

Coming from a wide social demographic spectrum, the protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park for weeks and built a community. The Occupation in New York inspired others in major cities and campuses around the country. Their slogan, “We are the 99%,” resounded in the populace, creating similar demonstrations in the streets of most major cities in the US including Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, and later Europe. 

In context, Occupy is the largest American movement to take place in the Age of Information – after the boom of the Internet and the proliferation of digital communication technologies. It began in a global atmosphere of protest: during the Arab Spring, a flurry of violent political protests in the Middle East, and other protests in Greece, Spain, and ..........(*&^%$#%^&*()  .  Many credit social media for the surges in activism (CITE).

This study will focus mainly on the movement in America as it pertains to technology and culture. Though it did spread to other continents and cultures, the scope of the project seeks to define and analyze the relationship between technology and American culture, as it can be seen in the Occupy Wall Street movement. As the Occupy movement is the first major protest in America since the boom of the Internet, it serves as a marker for cultural evaluation through the lens of technological development. 

WHAT IS THE MOVEMENT

SLOGAN/WHO ARE THE OCCUPIERS/ENEMY

The “99%” slogan rhetorically unified members of the American governed collective who unanimously felt disenchanted from the American Dream. The 99% is made up of not of just the poor and disenfranchised. In fact, most Occupiers are well-educated but under- or unemployed

. This social class has been called the precariat by Guy Standing in his 2011 book, “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class.” He describes them as “a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them.”

  All Occupiers do not necessarily fall into this sociological category, though it helps identify the primary grievance that unites them. In essence, Occupiers belong to or empathize with the majority of people in the country who do not control its wealth.

Occupiers took issue with systems they believe have marginalized citizens financially and socially – most notably, American government and Wall Street. The “1%” they oppose, then, represents those at the top income bracket in America, who have the most power. The powerful elites of Wall Street, big banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry, and government make up the “1%” who control more wealth than the 99% put together. While the rhetoric is not statistically accurate (for reference, the Forbes 400 held more wealth than the poorest 60% of Americans in 2010

) the slogan illustrates the us-versus-them disparity that points to the people Occupy considers accountable for the wrong done.

The movement soon gained the attention of the media and of political figures. Before long, the Occupiers had successfully imbedded their lingo into public discourse. It was undeniable that the movement had an impact on the country’s attitude toward issues which hadn’t yet been legitimized as plagues of certain classes of Americans. Occupy legitimized a concordant concern for corruption. 

To the 99%, it had become all too clear that the 1% were following a different set of rules. Gretchen Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times, describes these two sets of rules: “...one set applies to big and powerful institutions that when they go awry are rescued quickly. Then there is another set of rules for the rest of us who do what we are asked to do, do what we are supposed to do, and really then become victims of the situation.”

With such a broad and deep set of grievances, many in the nation found it difficult to understand the movement’s stance and main complaint; the movement was protesting fundamental characteristics of the economic status quo and wealth distribution. Occupiers have been tagged by the most critical and as Anti-American anarchists

. For Occupiers, change was not going to be as simple as rewriting certain laws. Many saw its vagueness as a weakness, but it has become a defining characteristic of Occupy.

Unlike past activists in movements for equality, such as the African Americans of the Civil Rights movement (CRM) of the 1960s and 70s, the precariat has not been explicitly denied rights that can be amended in law. History books point in hindsight to the CRM’s winning battle as the passing of the 15th Amendment, allowing African Americans to vote. However, the cultural change that the CRM activists won did not happen in an instant. It took much longer than the time it took to change the law. African Americans could vote, but prejudices and racism holding them as second-class citizens is still ebbing away half a century later. 

The Occupy movement seemed to develop with the understanding that cultural change typically happens more slowly than government or economic change. Institutionalized change happens from the top of a hierarchy and filters down as it is enforced. Cultural change occurs more slowly, sometimes taking a generation or more to create a change in sentiment. Awareness about issues, tragedies, or scandals can happen in an instant, but to truly change the way people think and feel about something like economic justice, Occupy knew it was in for the long haul.

Their awareness of this distinction between short- and long-term change led them to form their movement as an occupation, rather than a series of demonstrations. Not naming particular demands and occupying Wall Street signified the gravity of the change Occupy sought. They weren’t protesting a single CEO’s selfish actions. They weren’t upset about just a few home foreclosures. Occupiers have a fundamental beef with the system. Some call that system, collectively, Capitalism, or in a vaguer term, corruption. 

cultural change happening faster with technology

Many agreed with the complaints, but not the way Occupiers were going about their protest. As a movement of the Internet Age, Occupy was born and grew in the limelight. Coverage appeared in every medium of news. Many held

 it was not yet understood that the Occupiers were realizing and inventing their philosophy during the occupations. Since they had so much to complain about, some dismissed the movement as ineffective whining. The occupiers wanted change, but they didn’t want to use “the master’s tools” (Lorde) to attain it. This characteristic of the movement made the Occupiers seem disorganized, and made onlookers doubt the movement’s efficacy for change.

By the summer of 2012, most of the demonstrations had cleared away (cite). “Driven off the streets by local law enforcement officials, who have evicted protesters from their encampments and arrested thousands, the movement has seen a steep decline in visibility. That has left Occupy without bases of operations in the heart of many cities and has forced protesters to spend time defending themselves in court, deterring many from taking to the streets again,” (NYT: “Occupy Movement” topic page).

Despite the criticism, certain themes in the mantra of the Occupy movement began to surface. The world had seen protests before, but Occupy seemed to have a different attitude toward the act of protesting, and the results they wanted to see. Large and enduring protests had emerged and endured before. It was a common protest theme to no longer tolerate a system that favors an elite few to make decisions for the rest or put so much power in too few hands. What makes Occupy different is the horizontal spirit beneath the protest.

The terms horizontal and rhizomatic are descriptors for the more widespread human attitude that Occupiers have adopted. It is one that has become prevalent at the paradigmatic shift between broadcast communication and networked communication – though it did exist before the shift. This shift was the result of a technological advancement: the Internet. And not just the Internet, but more specifically, the Dot Com boom. Some call this the Web 2.0 age, which we are currently in; the world wide web networks millions and has become a primary method of communication. Its stand-out feature is its relatively uncensored content and the freedom with which users can communicate.

Imbedded in Occupy is an appreciation for the individual. This idea bled into the organizing structure (websites, study groups, committees) that resulted from the occupations. In an age and country where the Broadcast method of communication has been outmoded by networking technology, Occupy citizens demand the systems that govern wealth and power adopt methods of communication and operation that emphasizes individual participation. No more vertical hierarchy. We can communicate our needs and wants and sufferings with you. You cannot pretend you don’t hear us, and we can no longer be silent or still with the knowledge of what could be. Technology has resolved many issues that lead to the system that Occupiers oppose –  like Electoral Politics, a system that used to be necessary to efficiently and accurately accomplish a goal, but whose use no longer seems necessary now that representatives can communicate much better with constituents. 

 is no longer a need to let so few control the fates of so many without their input. 

***

However, people did not simply wake up on September 17, 2011, frustrated and believing that the solution was to abolish vertical hierarchy and embrace horizontal communication. The seeds grew slowly as grievances piled up and citizens began to lose trust in the systems that once had seemed to have their interests at heart. 

As the 99% was losing faith in a flawed and corrupt system, culture had been adopting new technologies. The Internet came into common use. Social networking and information sharing boomed. These advances – not just in technology but culture’s assimilation to it – fundamentally changed American culture and its expectations for government. In general, a few things happened:

There was a learning boom. Information had always been there, but access to it had been a matter of physical proximity. When the floodgate to information burst open on the web, people could access media more easily. People absorbed information and opinion into the global consciousness, it turned into knowledge, created understanding, and fueled conversation. A new generation was born into the populace with a skeptical frown at the amount of corruption the population tolerated.

People were sharing their experiences and becoming more informed about the world around them. Social networking, blogs, online news helped people realize that they were not alone in their social and economic struggles. (The Occupy Movement’s Tumblr page, “We Are the 99 Percent,” reflects the importance that sharing experiences has had for fostering solidarity and empathy throughout the movement.)

Transparency grew. Fact-checking could be done from a person’s living room by anyone, not by an expert in a library. Policies that had once been grumblingly accepted started to not add up. People started to realize that they were being taken advantage of. 

And culture began to change. (These are enormous generalizations that will be explored later in the thesis.) People began to vocalize and question whether they should tolerate unfair practices and those who impose unfair (arguably unconstitutional) policies on the 99% to control debt, savings accounts and retirement funds. With an outlet to vent and discuss online, people gained not only sympathetic networks but confidence in their theories. 

Individuals felt informed, empowered and obligated to make the changes they desired. And this sentiment of Occupy was a manifestation of cultural change induced by technological advancements in communication. The Net has rewired our brains to demand justice of systems that have not caught up to technology. And this sentiment has manifested in the Occupiers’ continued campaign, past the city occupations.

Occupy Wall Street brings to light a paradigm shift in the definition of collective activism catalyzed (though not yet refined) by the introduction of digital technologies such as Internet, email and social media. These tools have been used by Occupy Wall Street to maintain the campaign, and they have abandoned the previous model of collective action that required, for communication purposes, a hierarchical vertical system to work. 

Occupiers have created websites where they emphasize the importance of each individual voice. They are open to suggestions, and acknowledge that the campaign is still a work in progress. They show flexibility and acceptance to change not seen in corporations or government. OWS has continued to strive for progress through collaboration. As Occupywallst.org explains

, the organization models a people's assembly (should probably mention this term earlier) using participatory decision-making to reflect the consensus of every member

. 

Since the start of the movement, they have not seen the government overthrown or the lynching of greedy CEOs. There have been no major changes in policy, unemployment rates, or accountability of the big banks. The 1% have barely acknowledged the movement. On surface-level observation, Occupy has yet to make tangible impact to “the systems.” Major media has long stopped following the movement, and for many it has faded out of mind. Universities have not lowered their tuition rates and students are still saddled with debt, but OccUversity has established a curriculum and holds round-table classes every week in New York City (cite).

However, the Occupy movement has successfully implanted its sentiments into the consciousness of American and global culture, and is continuing its work at a physical, intellectual and personal level. Posts are written, groups are meeting, ideas are spreading, and the Occupy spirit has not been defeated. 

***

Occupy has chosen a system – a people’s assembly – focused on the rhizomatic process of creating transformative change. Their system is essentially a leaderless web of contributing individuals and focuses on horizontalism instead of only trying to fix old systems of government or economy. 

By identifying the structural characteristics of Occupy Wall Street and breaking down to the real actions of its members since the Occupations, this thesis seeks to define a new philosophy for activism that has become possible as an evolution of consciousness because of digital communication technologies. It is not the goal of this thesis to argue whether the Occupy Movement is stronger or weaker for its chosen method. The real goal is to point to the characteristics of the movement’s attitude as results of American culture’s adoption of technology. 

• “status quo” ... 
• Indefiniteness of their specific change demanded
• change has so many manifestations
• make more clear, as its own paragraph
• change from hierarchy to horizontal

By identifying the structural characteristics of Occupy Wall Street, this thesis seeks to define a new philosophy for activism now possible with digital communication technologies. This thesis will maintain the theme that new technology is the factor most responsible for the paradigm shift. This will require research about the Internet and its technologies’ influence on human behavior."

Technology did not change our minds; it is only an extension and physical manifestation of the human mind at work. But did it facilitate a boost in culture change.  

Part two will outline a timeline of events that triggered OWS and the events that took place during the Occupation.

Part three will introduce the former attitude toward collective action, one that was based on different technologies. Key words here will be the paradigm shift from the broadcasting (one-to-many) mode of communication to the networking mode (many-to-many).

Part four will dive into the networking mode and how it has manifested in the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Part five will detail the movement’s ongoing methods of communication and action – its legacy and structure. Details on the movements further organization into committees and respective websites shall be included, as well as examples of tangible new results since the occupatiers left the streets and returned to their computer screens.

The sixth and final part will conclude with theories about technology and the evolution of collective consciousness, which OWS has provided a microcosmic study subject. Furthermore, OWS, to this writer, exemplifies a major turn – or “paradigm shift” – in this collective intellectual evolution.

Part 2: The Occupation

This section can be a LOT more concise. It is definitely not a major focus of the paper. Its purpose is just to put the movement in context, globally.

Sentiment in America toward its government and economic status had been developing an angry brew up to the point of the Occupation for a long time. People had begun to “awaken” to just how widespread and unacceptable the issues were, but a movement hadn’t united people yet.

Future Occupiers would draw from reasons dating back to 2008?(American recession, Bank bailout, the Housing Bubble Pop – whatever was earliest) to have sparked them angrily into action and stayed on their laundry list of complaints. However, it was a politically tumultuous global atmosphere that ultimately boosted the movement into being. 

Wendy Brown. "Occupy Wall Street: Return of a Repressed Res-Publica." Theory & Event 14.4 (2011).Project MUSE. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Wendy Brown’s article from late in 2011 identifies the political factors that spurred the OWS movement: the recession, unemployment, the continuation of the Iraq war, what she calls “neoliberal deregulation and corporately bought democracy,” and the presidential administration’s failure to deliver promised improvements for the middle class. Her short article explains now how Occupy Wall Street started, but why.

Catalysts for Occupy came from outrage and action in other parts of the world. The Arab Spring and protests in Greece, Spain, Wisconsin and Ohio helped set the stage for a large protest in the United States. There, people took to the streets to put their feet down against corrupt government in the name of justice, human rights and social freedoms. There are a few major  highlight events that help build up to Occupy Wall Street in the United States, starting about a year before the movement’s beginning. Many events helped set the stage, though no single event is to be credited as the sole tipping point. 

On December 17, 2010, a man named Mohammed Bouazizi lit his body on fire in Tunisia. His suicide was an outcry against prolonged police harassment in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. In response, demonstrations sparked to protest President Sine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the ruler of a decades-long autocratic government. Four weeks later, the president was forced to dissolve parliament and fled the country (cite). Michael Moore, a supporter of Occupy, wrote, “His singular sacrifice ignited a revolution that toppled Tunisia's dictator and launched revolts in regimes across the Middle East” (A Man in Tunisia...). His statement came three months into the Occupy movement and one year after the monk’s suicide. Moore calls the monk’s action the “fuse” that “ignited” Occupy. While symbolic, this attribution was made in hindsight; other more significant occurrences were not direct results of the self-immolation, but continued the same spirit of protest. 

The Arab Spring in the Middle East and Egypt officially started a month later, on January 25, 2011. The massive demonstration began on Police Day – a day symbolic of their demand for an end to harassment, repression and torture – and lasted for 18 days. The uprising focused its energy against the dictator president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. (CITE NUMBER) of Egyptians surged into Tahrir Square when Mubarak’s forces blocked Internet traffic and hired thugs to assail the protesters. As the world watched, the regime fell on February 11. It was the beginning of the Arab Spring – violently pro-democractic activism that further took place in Yemen, Bahrain and Syria (CITE). 

Closer to home, the Spring may not have exactly inspired, but empowered citizens in Ohio and Wisconsin to protest against state government on February 17, 2011. “Governor Scott Walker’s austerity budget and his attack on collective bargaining” provoked over 20,000 Wisconsinites to carry protest signs and wave Egyptian flags, expressing unity with the struggles in the Middle East. The rebels occupied the state capitol in Madison for weeks, and hundreds were arrested. “In Columbus, Ohio, nearly 4,000 protest against similar attacks on the public sector and workers' rights” (CITE).

In the springtime, Spain saw protests begin on May 15, 2011. “Protests against austerity and unemployment erupt in 58 Spanish cities, beginning the 15-M Movement. More than 1,000 indignados occupy the central square, Puerta del Sol; in the weeks that follow, hundreds of thousands gather in public spaces, holding mass assemblies and peaceful sit-ins to demand greater say in the political process. Embracing participatory democracy, they reject traditional parties and the rule of finance that imploded the country's economy” (OccupyTogether).

Greece also hosted protests in May. On the 25th, thousands of Athenians gathered after the government announced plans to drastically cut public spending and raise taxes – in the face of a €110 billion bailout. Many organizations and demonstrations were networked on Facebook – ex. Sustained Strike – and stretched over the whole country. “The aganaktismenoi, or indignants, are met with tear gas and police violence” (OccupyTogether).

Adbusters

The Occupy movement was originally tagged and initiated by a call from Adbusters which was posted on July 13, 2011. "Occupy Wall Street" was inspired by the several international protests. Thousands answered the call and arrived in Zuccotti Park, at the heart of New York City's financial district, to protest the damaging influence of corporations on politics as well as social and economic inequality. Hundreds stayed every night for two months and created an encampment in the park, a model that was adopted by people all over the country as the movement spread to well over 500 cities (Occupy Together).

Harcourt, Bernard E. "Political Disobedience." The University of Chicago Press 39.1 (2012): n. pag. JSTOR. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668049>.

Harcourt’s article proposes a new term, “political disobedience,” to describe the OWS movement’s resistance to the political structures that govern. He explains that OWS’s  unwillingness to follow the established rules is a form of political engagement. Using examples from the happenings of the protest, he illustrates the ways that protesters built a community and made meaning. His article focuses on the relationship between Occupy Wall Street and the political entities it protested. Harcourt’s commentary is valuable in identifying OWS’s intentions versus those projected onto it by those who thought of it under the old definition of activism.

WHO ARE THE OCCUPIERS: Many of the Occupiers are well educated and underemployed ("Changing the Subject: A Bottom Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City").

Part 3: Definition of Occupy’s Methods

The new paradigm, where Web 2.0 allows people to network, provided many affordances to activists. Someone with an issue can now send information to many people who do not have to be physically connected or know each other. 

An Adbusters blog post set a date for the Occupation months in advance, and people showed up to join the movement. 

During the Occupation, Occupy found its method. With their slogan “We are the 99%,” they decided to model themselves in a People’s Assembly, practicing consensus. 

The Occupation was a rhetorical and visual demonstration.

 People assembled and camped out to show that they were equals, that their demands (not stated) would take a long time to address, and that the were not going to move until they had let everyone know. 

Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1993. N. pag. Print.

Howard Rheingold is an expert on networked communication and explains in The Virtual Community that human interactions are being made deeper by faceless technology. In chapter 9, “Electronic Frontiers and Online Activists,” he discusses the old “one-to-many” notion (broadcast paradigm) of mass-communication and shows that new activists are taking advantage of a “many-to-many” understanding (network paradigm) of digital technology. This chapter especially contributes the new nomenclature to aide in defining Occupy Wall Street’s organic, non-hierarchical organization, and will help explain why those who still hold onto the broadcast-activism notion do not see the potential in Occupy’s network approach.

{“The Occupy movement is a dramatic performance of the rhetoric of occupatio. It refuses to describe or define in any detail the world that it wants to create, while showing this world in its actual presence as a nascent community. It renounces the demand that it make specific, practical demands, while opening a space in which innumerable demands can be articulated. And it does so, not so much as a declaration of inadequacy (“we are unable to say what we want”) as a principle of refusal and deliberate deferral (“this is not the time to utter policy statements, but to make a more fundamental framing statement with the simple fact of our presence here”)... This space is foundational because it is prior to politics in the usual sense, constituting a potentially revolutionary and constitutive site of assembly, speech, and action.... It should be clear, then, why it was that the Occupy movement went viral globally, and not any of the specific demands about the removal of dictators, the assertion of democracy, or the overturning of capitalism. Occupy was capable of reconciling—or at least providing a common place for—innumerable contradictions... (bringing together people from all parts, places, creeds)...The very word, occupy, performed a kind of homeopathic magic on the discourse of globalization and, indeed, on discourse as such....The world was waiting for just such a counteroccupation. It was not enough to call for a demonstration, a parade, or a temporary gathering. The difference between demonstration and occupation, and the arts specific to each, is significant. The sit-ins of the American civil rights movement were gestures of occupation, declarations that the racial segregation of public spaces would no longer be tolerated. Occupation is, in addition to its spatial connotations, an art of duration and endurance, manifesting the paradoxical synthesis of socialmovement and mobilization with immobility, the refusal to move. It is a movement whose central declaration is, as the classic protest song puts it, “We Shall Not Be Moved.” It presumes the long campaign, the revolution as a lengthy process” (Mitchell, Image, Space, Revolution).}

Networking (many-to-many)

Harcourt, Bernard E. "Political Disobedience."

Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House."

Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier.

Part 4: Comparison to the Civil War (Pre-INT)

Broadcast (one-to-many). The paradigm shift is ultimately not the sole cause of technology. In the broadcast paradigm, information moved much slower and could be controlled more easily because it took money and power to share information. For pre-Web activists, that meant printing and mailing pamphlets, only to those people whose addresses they had or who they could share their pamphlets with in person.

Occupy Wall Street’s consensus-based People’s Assembly, as a TYPE of movement, is not in its embryonic stage. There was, indeed, a major paradigm shift in technology & culture that separated instances of this TYPE, but it is by no means the first of its kind. While the size/scope/influence/widespread acceptance of the Occupy movement has been facilitated by INT, it is not the root cause of this development in American culture.

Functionally, consensus is not a new concept – in fact, it is a very very old one. Before colonialism, Native American tribes and communities governed themselves this way. Since the European conquest of what is now the United States, Democracy has become the governing method. Occupy is the first large-scale movement to use consensus as a defining feature of its movement. All "movements" are leaderless, but in hindsight we can attribute "leaders," whether functional or symbolic. 

For example, a faction of the Civil Rights movement valued consensus as a method of decision-making, but has less historical prominence than Martin Luther King, Jr.’s SCLC or the Black Panthers. The Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee branched off from the SCLC to use a consensus-driven method that was more community-based. 

David Graeber, an Occupy member from the beginning of the movement, wrote an entry in support for the consensus model. He wrote, “The very first mass movement in the United States that operated by consensus was the SNCC, or Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a primarily African-American group created in 1960 as a horizontal alternative to Martin Luther King's (very vertical) SCLC.” He argues that those in favor of a democratic, hierarchical movement stuck with in as a matter of efficiency

However, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference was the more influential faction of the CRM. The SCLC was hierarchical, while the SNVCC was more community-based. “To a certain extent during the period 1960–1964, SCLC had a mentoring relationship with SNCC before SNCC began moving away from nonviolence and integration in the late 1960s. Over time, SCLC and SNCC took different strategic paths, with SCLC focusing on large-scale campaigns such as Birmingham and Selma to win national legislation and SNCC focusing on community-organizing to build political power on the local level” (http://www.crmvet.org/ find better source)

Part 5: Occupy's Ongoing Legacy & Structure

"Occupy works in its own system – a people’s assembly – focused on the rhizomatic process of creating transformative change. Intrinsic to this new model are digital communication technologies."

"The affordances of digital media have worked to facilitate the faster and broader uncovering and spreading of information that empowers and provokes self-interested individuals. They work not just to protest wrongs, but also to unite in a community whose members are diverse and willing to change existing systems, or create new ones that are more reflective of modern needs and capabilities. This paradigm shift represents not just change in the philosophy of protest, but an evolution of the way humans communicate and enact change."

People's Assembly

Websites as well as Physical Meetups

Committees

-Occupy Student Debt

-Occupy University

-The Occupied Wall Street Journal

"Results" vs. Expectations

Longevity of the movement

Part 6: DTC... TECHNOLOGY IN GENERAL

Don Tapscott’s book, “Grown Up Digital,” is all about the Net Generation (NG): the first to grow up fully embracing digital technologies. Tapscott believes their values differ from previous generations’, and many of them – freedom, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, and innovation – resound with the problems that the Occupiers have with the 1%. Tapscott dedicated the third part of his book, “Transforming Society,” to explaining how the NG engages with Democracy, politics, volunteerism, etc. At the end of each chapter, Tapscott gives guidelines to better understand and cooperate with the NG; it bridges the gap and advises on how to compromise based on the NG norms. These guidelines may help sculpt a new philosophy that brings the 1%  and the frustrated 99% to middle ground. Also, Tapscott’s book is extensively researched – its bibliography will be invaluable.

Clay Shirky studies how the internet effects society in his book “Here Comes Everybody,” focusing on how it has changed the way people organize. Chapter 6, “Collective Action and Institutional Challenges,” discusses how collective action began to erode traditional institutions with the aid of the Web in the 1990s. He uses the example of the Catholic scandal in Boston where a priest sexually abused young boys – afterward a group of over 25,000 church members using email and weblogs organized to reform their church without the permission or help of any church leader. He points to this instance to show how digital technology is changing human behavior and challenging some of civilization’s oldest institutions. Digital technology has removed obstacles that use to hinder groups of people from making change, and now people like the Occupiers are using it as a tool to better coordinate and work on solutions to their problems.

Chapter 6: Collective Action and Institutional Challenges

The sixth chapter of Shirky’s book on the power of organizing without organizations explains how collective action began to erode traditional institutions with the aid of the Web in the 1990s. He pointed to an example from the Catholic Church’s scandal involving priests and bishops sexually abusing young boys in Boston. Scandals early in the 90s had been managed by the Church by keeping the matter internal (147), but a 2002 reoccurrence proved impossible to censor. A lay group called Voice of the Faithful organized in November of 2002 (144) to include 25,000 members in less than a year (145) by using new media to share information: weblogs and emails (148).

“What we are witnessing today is a difference in the degree of sharing so large it becomes a difference in kind... even the minimal hassle involved in sending a newspaper clipping to a group (xeroxing the article, finding envelopes and stamps, writing addresses) widens the gap between intention and action” (149). Technology minimized the cost of aggregation (151), quickened the group’s ability to add and inform members (152) and widened the potential audience to individuals who could join on their own without needing a friend to suggest it (153). “VOTF has become a powerful force, all while remaining loosely (and largely electronically) coordinated” (153). 

“What technology did do was alter the spread, force, and especially duration of that reaction, by removing two old obstacles – locality of information, and barriers to group reaction” (153). People no longer have to be physically near each other or even know one another personally to share ideas now. To boot, email is practically cost free, instant, and does not require a sender and receiver to synchronize in time to exchange information (157). 

Technology did not change information. It did not change opinion. It enhanced the way people USE it, and REGARD it -- as more accessible, free to everyone, becoming a basic human right. It freed people from the constrictions of geography and time. A movement could become a living, breathing, extended entity, no longer pinpointed in particular meetings, conversations, or media. Movements now have the ability to exist constantly. With communication and  in their availability

Even for the Catholic Church, one of the oldest and most hierarchical institutions mankind has seen, is not immune to the effects of its members using digital technology to organize and participate outside its realm (153). 

“In a world where group action means gathering face-to-face, people who need to act as a group should, ideally, be physically near one another.  Now that we have ridiculously easy group-forming, however, that stricture is relaxed, and the result is that organizations that assume geography as a core organizing principle, even ones that have been operating that way for centuries, are now facing challenges to that previously bedrock principle” (155).

The American government is another such organization not immune to the challenge of its constituents.

Shirky reminds his readers that the Web and social tools like email have now become so commonplace that they make it difficult to imagine life before them (156). Email is practically cost free, instant, and does not require a sender and receiver to synchronize in time to exchange information; he explains that these characteristics of the tool are what gives group conversation such great success as a medium for group communication (157).

The Web is another overlooked and common tool that has drastically changed communication: users no longer needed to ask permission to create their own interfaces or modify old ones (158). This makes the Web not only a great tool as-is, but has imbedded in it the option for limitless improvement.

Shirky concludes the chapter by saying, “What the rise of new and newly powerful lay organizations shows us is that in the right cases people are willing and even eager to come together and affect the world. Motivation, energy, and talent for action are all present in those sorts of groups – what was not present, until recently, was the ability to coordinate easily.” That is why Shirky does not see the social tools as responsible for the activism, but they change the world by removing obstacles that previously hindered such movement (159).

Evolution of my thesis statement / theory

1. (Thesis proposal phase - November) Occupiers didn't want to work within the systems they opposed, so like anarchists, they came up with a new set of rules. This tied to their refusal to name a demand. Internet and networking technology  (INT) helped them collaborate and functionally do that.

Formal thesis: "The new definition of collective action is currently in an embryonic stage; it is not yet clear what new activism will look like when it is better developed. OWS utilizes new digital technologies as its organizational media and attempts to organically generate solutions to their grievances without relying on the structure of the systems they oppose. By identifying the structural characteristics of Occupy Wall Street, this thesis seeks to define a new philosophy for activism now possible with digital communication technologies. This thesis will maintain the theme that new technology is the factor most responsible for the paradigm shift. This will require research about the Internet and its technologies’ influence on human behavior."

2. (After studying Occupy's actions, websites, current doings - January) Internet, structure, and attitude of the Occupiers = rhizome. INT has imposed itself on culture, and changed people's attitude from what it was before. Hierarchy vs. horizontalism -- leadership vs. individuals.

From February "breakthrough" entry: "Technology has outmoded the hierarchical design that bestows so much power on so few. The design of the Internet, of a network – of the rhizome – gives users the means to share all with all. It no longer makes sense for so few people to control such a disproportionate amount of the country's wealth and political influence. That is why, in Occupy, there are no leaders. The fact that they have endured for so long as a people's assembly speaks to the efficacy and potential this structure has."

3. (After comparison to Civil Rights Movement - Current) Technology did not change our minds, but facilitated/boosted culture's change. Horizontalism (functionally, consensus) is not a new concept – Occupy is just the first major movement to use it in its definition. All "movements" are leaderless, but in hindsight we can attribute "leaders," whether functional or symbolic.

At the outset of this project, I thought it would be secondary to consider WHAT Occupy was fighting for. Primarily, I wanted to see how their HOW (structure, use of technology) made them different from other past movements. But it's bigger than that -- the how honestly almost identical to the Civil Rights movement (or at least a faction of it). I am finding that one of the most important parts of the movement is HOW Democratic decisions (51% vs 49% vote) have replaced consensus and lead to "corporate greed." They have chosen a pre-colonial way, consensus, to govern Occupy.

David Graeber: Some Remarks on Consensus

David Graeber: Some Remarks on Consensus

“Atrophy and complacency are the death of movements. Any viable experiment in freedom is pretty much going to have to constantly re-examine itself, see what's working and what isn't—partly because situations keep changing, partly because we're trying to invent a culture of democracy in a society where almost no one really has any experience in democratic decision-making, and most have been told for most of their lives that it would be impossible, and partly just because it's all an experiment, and it's in the nature of experiments that sometimes they don't work.

Justine Tunney recently wrote a piece called "Occupiers: Stop Using Consensus!" that begins by describing it as "the idea that a group must strictly adhere to a protocol where all decisions are unanimous"—and then goes on to claim that OWS used such a process, with disastrous results. This is bizarre. OWS never used absolute consensus. On the very first meeting on August 2, 2011 we established we'd use a form of modified consensus with a fallback to a two-thirds vote.

David Graeber explains that “consensus” is not a middle class/white person thing at all - in fact, it was the white colonialist who turned most of their conquests into majority vote-type societies. In simpler times, tribes and communities came to agreements by consensus. “Almost everywhere in the Americas, indigenous communities use consensus and the white or mestizo descendants of colonialists use majority voting (insofar as they made decisions on an equal basis at all, which mostly they didn't), and when you find an indigenous community using majority voting, it is again under the explicit influence of European ideas—almost always, along with elected officials, and formal rules of procedure obviously learned in colonial schools or borrowed from colonial regimes.... Indigenous communities in America all used consensus decision-making instead of voting. Africans brought to the Americas had been kidnapped from communities where consensus was the normal mode of making collective decisions, and violently thrust into a society where "democracy" meant voting (even though they themselves were not allowed to vote.)”

So the Occupy movement, in the age of the Paradigm shift, has been using technology to try to DEVOLVE or go back to the way things WERE, before the 1% took power and made decisions for them. Retrogress - but not for the worse.

“As far as I can make out the ideas comes out of political arguments that surrounded the rise of Black Nationalism in the 1960s. The very first mass movement in the United States that operated by consensus was the SNCC, or Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a primarily African-American group created in 1960 as a horizontal alternative to Martin Luther King's (very vertical) SCLC....They (?) seized on consensus as a kind of wedge issue—this made sense, politically, because many of those white allies were Quakers, and it was advantageous, at first, to frame the argument as one of efficiency, rather than being about more fundamental moral and political issues like non-violence.

Ella Baker on the principle "strong people don't need strong leaders."

None of those who challenged consensus did so in the name of a different form of direct democracy. In fact, I'm not aware of any example of an activist group that abandoned consensus and then went on to settle on some different, but equally horizontal approach to decision-making. The end result is invariably abandoning direct democracy entirely Sometimes that's because, as here, that is explicitly what those challenging consensus want. But even when it's not, the same thing happens, because moving from consensus sets off a dynamic that inevitably leads in a vertical direction.... Before long, those who never liked direct democracy to begin with start saying it's what's really to blame for all these problems, it's inefficient, things would run far more smoothly with clearly defined leadership roles—and it only takes a vote of 51% of the remaining, much more vertical group, to ditch direct democracy entirely.
Communities face immediate such practical concerns so pressing many feel working outside the system would be irresponsible. Those who don't often feel they have no choice but to adopt either strict, rigorous, MLK-style non-violence, or adopt revolutionary militarism like the panthers—both of which tend to lead to top down forms of organization. As a result, the culture of consensus, the style in which it's conducted, the sensibilities surrounding it, inevitably comes to reflect the white middle-class background of so many of those who have created and shaped it, and the result is that those who do not share these sensibilities feel alienated and excluded.

[Consensus] ultimately comes down to just two principles: everyone should have equal say (call this "equality"), and nobody should be compelled to do anything they really don't want to do (call this, "freedom.")

So really.... it’s the 49% vs. the 51%...?

NEW DEMOCRACY.... Unions and Government are majority vote systems.

“First of all, as I remarked, OWS from the beginning did not have a system where just one person could block a proposal; in the event of a block, we had the option to fall back on a 2/3 majority vote. So if everyone had really loved the proposal, the block could have been simply brushed aside....A block is not a "no" vote. It's a veto. Or maybe a better way to put it is that giving everyone the power to block is like giving the power to take on the role of the Supreme Court, and stop a piece of legislation that they feel to be unconstitutional, to anyone who has the courage to stand up in front of the entire group and use it. When you block you are saying a proposal violates one of the group's agreed-on common principles.....Consensus only works if working groups or collectives don't feel they need to seek constant approval from the larger group, if initiative arises from below, and people only check upwards if there's a genuinely compelling reason not to go ahead with some initiative without clearing it with everyone else. In a weird way, the very unwieldiness of consensus meetings is helpful here, since it can discourage people from taking trivial issues to a larger group, and thus potentially waste hours of everyone's time.”

"The power of Occupy has always been that it is an experiment in human freedom. That's what inspired so many to join us. That's what terrified the banks and politicians, who scrambled to do everything in their power—infiltration, disruption, propaganda, terror, violence—to be able to tell the word we'd failed, that they had proved a genuinely free society is impossible, that it would necessarily collapse into chaos, squalor, antagonism, violence, and dysfunction.

Comparison to Civil Rights Movement

NATIONAL RAGE
awakening of a generation

"The Civil Rights protesters were vilified, misrepresented, called names, and even told by white people who sympathized with them that now isn't the time for a movement. They were seen as bad people because they were unruly, they didn't know their place, they supposedly had Communist sympathies, and they were clashing with police (or being beaten by them) and breaking the laws out in public." ---Yahoo

comment: "The civil rights movement was about equal rights regardless of who you are. OWS is about equal pay regardless of what you do."

Reflection:
People cut down Occupiers' credibility because they carry macbooks and got themselves into debt themselves – by making poor investments or knowingly paying for a college degree.

criticizing the symptoms is the wrong way to hit this movement as “not legitimate.” Those people are struggling for many reasons, some more legit than others. THere are always going to be people who abuse the system and make the legitimate complainers look bad, which is something that the some mainstream media did a lot of. [Fox, Occupy Unmasked?]

The occupiers should be working rather than occupying, living off their parents’ bank accounts? That is a copout. Students who can’t pay their student loans did knowingly apply for them, so they “got themselves into it.” They may come off as entitled kids who think the government owes them a handout. That does not mean that the government/the system/the “you must go to college to get a good job culture” does not need fixing. or that they should have saw it coming. It’s a problem they see that needs to be fixed. 

Technology has not changed our mindset; it only helps us be more effective active in what we THINK we can accomplish. This does not mean we're any better at changing the minds of those they oppose. There are still functional and logical obstacles to hurtle before that can be achieved (the answer must be reached for in a tangible way -- esp. for the government). 

What technology does is facilitate culture. It is merely an extension of our minds – as opposed to industrial times (pre Web 2.0) when machines were extensions only of our bodies. It has not changed our values, but hightened the speed at which we can empathize, plan, and execute. Good and evil are still opposing forces, and they come in new forms as time passes. 

Before network technology, we obeyed the hierarchy. Now, Occupiers have very little respect for the authorities that control government or banks. Transparency may be partly to blame for that, which came from our new ability to share ideas and informaiton on the Web. Americans in the "99%" created new expectations when they saw such big connections between their problems and money. Debt, education, home ownership. Money controls it all. And so the people blame the ones who control the money – the "1%".

Occupy is essentially an economic protest. Everything they argue about has to do with money – not necessarily a specific right. It just all leads back to those who control the wealth – hence the 99% vs. 1%. Haves and have-nots is a term of power more so than money. But it's about the ones who control the money and use it to influence/manipulate government. The SOCIAL issues that stem from there are still, at the root, financial.

"While the civil rights movement took up the cause of racial injustice, the Occupy movement has sounded the call for economic justice, Kathleen McQuillen, a member of the nonviolence group American Friends Service Committee said. “Perhaps that’s the last one to be brought forth in our society,” McQuillen said. “Not that there’s equality around races at this point, but we started that, and I think when we can bring forth economic justice than we can also bring forth a more racially equal society.” --Grant Rogers Iowa Caucus? DesMoinesRegister.com

Jesse Jackson: “Occupy is not about a place, but a space,” says Jackson, who is celebrating 50 years as a civil rights advocate. “It’s not about the place downtown but the inequality gap. Occupy is a spirit that cannot be pepper-sprayed.”

CRITICISM

Those who find beef with Occupiers or cannot empathize see them as entitled. It seems radical and offensive to them to compare occupiers to blacks from the civil rights movement. 1) Blacks were seen as second class citizens and faced real repression - denied rights explicitly (the issue here for empathy is that the Occupiers are not EXPLICITLY being denied any rights. They just know they have a problem and think they know who the culprits are)

2) "Probably the most important difference is that where black civil-rights activists were driven by a deep desire to be full, free, productive members of society, the occupiers have a deep disdain for the mainstream, or the “rat race” as they call it, for those hordes who cluelessly trudge to pointless jobs every day. Their posters and placards chastise Joe Public for being robotic, while graciously informing us that capitalism has turned us all into “chumps or tarts”. Where civil-rights protesters wanted in, the occupiers want out – they want to opt out of a society which in their minority middle-class view is too competitive and vulgar and stuff-obsessed. Consider the different clothing worn by the self-respecting civil-rights activist and the self-regarding occupier. The black marchers on Washington wore their Sunday best, suits and ties, to signal their respectability and desire to be part of society; the modern occupiers wear psychedelic leggings or fancy dress, to signal their scoffing disregard for the straights and squares who make up the vile mainstream world." ---- Telegraph, uk Brendan O'Niell