Reflections on the Oakland Strike and Occupy Movement

Ok... after days of being too busy with my MA to write about Oakland's general strike, here it is!  Lots of analysis below so I thought I'd start with this video I found on youtube of the dance circle I was groovin' in on the ports.  Have to admit, I had a bit too much fun downloading it and watching in slow mo :)    

The Oakland strike and occupy movement have been taking a great deal of my attention recently, and so this post will, unabashedly, have nothing to do with Zen - unless Zen happens to have something to do with aiding a society in its pursuit of understanding and finding ways to challenge major economic inequities which lie at the root of manifold sufferings.  I don't mean to suggest that as practitioners we have an obligation to support OWS - Occupy Wall Street - but it's at least worthwhile to consider the connection between bodhisattva vows and meaningful political action..  

And because it's so very difficult to figure out how to be involved in a way that feels right - or even to think about politics in a way that feels right, that promotes clarity, calm, and loving-kindness - it's also worthwhile to consider what role the sangha, and individual dharma brothers and sisters, might play in helping us grow in our own political consciousness and political actions.  I know that I personally have not developed my political awareness to any heightened degree largely due to feeling the need for conversations and actions that are focused on speaking and acting mindfully - with calm, clarity and care.  I have have had difficulty finding and creating such a situation, and so all too often have not elevated myself politically even though I have a great desire to do so.  In Buddhism we talk about "right" or "skillful" speech and action, meaning speech and actions that facilitate the bodhisattva vows.  What does right or skillful political speech and action within a sangha trying to raise its political consciousness look like?

Back to OWS. As I see it, OWS is not so much about coming up with specific goals and demands or providing a leader, but about bringing the masses of people together to figure out problems that politicians, and perhaps the economic and political infrastructure itself, seems unable to solve.   Right now, many people don't support the movement because they don't see any leadership or any cogent demands.  Making demands is actually far too easy and may even undermine the movement, centralized leadership may have a negative impact as well.  I'll say more about that below.  

This moment is about igniting a national dialog that will, hopefully, if enough people put the work in, give birth to a better society through means yet to be discovered.  The ideal is that Americans, in general, take this moment to talk to each other and raise their political consciousness and level of involvement in whatever they come to decide is the best course of action.  Every factory, family, school and sangha can be doing exactly this.  (If this sounds Marxist - no, I'm not.) 

The General Strike 

To begin with the end, I arrived home from the general strike around midnight.  I wanted to put something good in my body, so went out to the local late night grocer to get some bananas to put in a smoothy (orange juice, yogurt, bananas, spirulina and whey powder.  MMM!) At the counter was a Latino man, and we began talking.  He was passionate: "The strike is bad!  Why strike?  People lose money!  Workers need money!  We need to save every penny.  It's terrible."  We walked out into the midnight parking lot talking politics. "Yes," he says.  "Something needs to be done.  But I just don't know.  You vote for a politician, but as soon as they're in, they forget all about you.  So we must pray."  When he said that I immediately put my hands in gassho (prayer position) and was surprised when he did the same.  We shook hands and bid each other the best of luck. 

During the night, I had watched a few trucks blocked from entering the port, and it was emotionally difficult for me to watch hard working men growing exasperated and desperate about not being able to get into work and get paid.  From the looks on the faces in the blockade, it was difficult for most of us.

So why strike if it hurts workers?  

The idea of a basic strike is for workers, working in a specific business, to shut that business down in order to gain better working conditions. In effect, workers during a strike show that they, ultimately, control the work (although capital, especially in a global economy, often finds numerous ways around this.) But a general strike is a different creature entirely, it’s not a grievance against any particular company. Rather, by stepping outside of work and school, it’s a way to show, viscerally, that the people are all in this together. In a general strike people who normally don’t ever talk or even see each get to see their commonalities, get a sense that they are all in something together.

At the port, blocking the trucks, the main point emphasized was disrupting the flow of capital - probably worth $4 million that night alone.  So trucks in the port could park, and their drivers go home, but a truck could not enter or leave any street that led to or from the shipping complex.  Why stop the flow of capital?  I provide a link below from CBS where protesters, including Angela Davis (who I marched with for awhile), attempt to answer this question - but I think unconvincingly.  They mention hurting corporations, but I don't consider that to have been the point, nor am I so interested in that.  I don't think this particular general strike (which, honestly, it wasn't by a long shot,) hurt big corporations.  That would take a prolonged amount of time.  

I realize this may not seem like a big deal to others, but for me the efficacy of the strike was in bringing the city together, dialoging about common grievances, realizing commonalities, discovering means for collaboration, and engaging in powerful symbolic actions.  For me, that was the point of walking out of work and school and shutting down banks and a port.  The point was to raise political consciousness and build community.  Showing strength by shutting down capital facilitated those goals by mobilizing an entire city to collectively reflect on the nature of capital.  I don't think stopping the flow of capital for a day is nearly as important as that collective reflection, alliance building, and inspiration - in terms of sheer capital, I suspect this may in fact hurt ordinary people more than the 1%. 

Media Coverage         

A clear mind and open heart certainly facilitates such an endeavor: so thanks to, first off, the thousands of good hearted people involved in this, to the various interfaith groups who hosted prayer meetings, discussion groups, and meditation sessions during the general strike, and to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship: 

 

I took this picture of the meditation group when the 5PM march to the ports was already swinging, and most people had left.  It provided a space of calm which hundreds of people used, many of them for just a quick five minute re-energizer, over the course of the day.   

Below, at the Oakland port with the city and crowd behind us.  The crowd stretched back a good mile, and further into the port another quarter mile. The crowd felt endless, and seeing the full stretch while crossing the overpass - both ends going off beyond eyesight - was the most ecstatic part of night for many people.  It felt like the entire city, in all its wonderful diversity, was there.  I've seen the numbers 3,000 to 7,000 floated by all the mass television news channels - there's no way it was so few.  Suspiciously, I have yet to see a helicopter shot that follows anything close to the full length of the crowd. 

As the sun set, people continued to stream in...

Here is one of the best clips I've found by the mass television media. 

 

It provides the best aerial shot of the crowd I’ve seen (at 19 seconds into the clip), but I'm estimating that it only captures a quarter of the length of the march - the entire shot is taken within the port, leaving out the 3/4-mile long overpass and entrance which were also jam-packed with people.  Not to mention, there were probably a thousand people deep inside the port engaged in blockade actions in multiple locations.  In the segment, CBS speaks with Angela Davis (at 2:35 in the clip), specifically asking how the strike helped.  A few others were asked, but I don’t think anyone voiced the message well, which is a major problem: all that came across was, "we're trying to hurt big business, and its important moment to get together".  I think having no centralized leadership is a good thing right now, but people in the movement need to prioritize everyone learning how to articulate positions in the best possible way.  And I don't think this is the job of the GA's (general assemblies,) because peoples views differ, but I think the GA's should emphasize that people should work on the articulation of whatever they believe.  

 4:45 in the clip exemplifies how the media reduces protestors perspectives to “venting frustrations over bailouts, and what they say is corporate greed.”  (Their emphasis.)  I applaud the way the anarchist Black Bloc was handled at 5:50 in the clip – CBS made a strong statement and provided good footage showing that the general movement strongly disagrees with their tactical destruction.  However, I'm worried that this treatment was rare - I found more footage akin to the clip below by ABC, with a sole focus on property destruction.  It's well-designed to make the movement look bad, briefly nodding to the fact that only a small amount of people engaged in destructive acts in order to keep up the mask of being unbiased.  Even John Stewart, reporting the next day, discussed solely the property destruction.

 

It's extremely problematic that people who haven’t been involved in the movement consider it to be widely reported.  The truth is that very little has been reported; in this case wide coverage means wide misinformation.  Even the best of the the mass media leaves out, much less analyzes, perspectives and messages that are essential to understanding the movement.  To get more than soundbites on the perspective of those involved, you either have to be there, or turn to the world of academic blogs which are doing the work that media sometimes seems designed not to do.  So here we go...

 

The Problematics of Demands, Leadership, and Participating in the Political Structure 

As Frank Pasquale writes in the blog Balkanization, “…it's pretty predictable what will happen once demands get issued officially. If they're too ambitious, the movement will be dismissed as socialism. If they're moderate, it will be dismissed as stealth Obamaism, and the protesters will be condescendingly asked "why can't you just participate in the political system as it is?

“The protesters realize that they, like much of the bottom 90% of society, are on an economic playing field that is tilted against them. They feel that normal channels of political change are blocked (especially given corporate influence over the Democratic party, the usual target of egalitarian reformist energy). Addressing these issues will take a lot of thought, reflection, and debate.”

I think these are essential points to consider, but that are difficult to consider.  The temptation to ask for demands is strong, and so is the temptation to create them.  I'm impressed that OWS hasn't given in to that temptation.  Demands are tempting because they provide structure and direction - but such structure may have a downside: what happens once OWS is no longer open ended but clearly defined? Can the political infrastructure possibly work with the type of demands that would be asked for?  It's pretty clear that most people in OWS don't think presenting demands to a political party would have much effect.  Even if if we disagree, it's an interesting thought experiment to consider: if you wanted to see political change of the sort that the political system simply could not supply, then what? 

The point is that demands would automatically pigeonhole OWS within some pre-xisting, ineffectual political category.  Using a standard political language would make OWS more legible, but I think wrestling with the illegibility of non-standard concepts is a good idea right now, even if that process is messy.  Right now things are fluid and ambiguous, and this might be a time to tolerate ambiguity and practice the deeply suppressed art of political imagination.  Imagining yet another third party to compete within the two party system is not the answer that's being sought.  What needs to be imagined is difference. 

If the immediate urge is to create familiar structures and use familiar language, it may be interesting to try and seriously consider the potential benefits of not creating or replicating structures and language that we are so used to.  It may be interesting to take note of what it feels like to consider unfamiliar political structures and use unfamiliar political dialect.  I know that for some, this brings a feeling of freedom, for others, tightening up and resistance.  What's behind all that?  Perhaps this is getting too esoteric, but I think that noticing the somatics of this shows how political concepts have entered our bodies in some way, and it is difficult to let go of what has shaped us.  In a way that's actually what I'm most interested in, which I think makes sense for someone devoted to zazen - the art of noticing and releasing what's being held onto.  But I'm staying afield. 

Regardless of where we stand, its a good idea to consider the benefits of political imagination.

As far as considering the strategy of no leadership, I found it useful to consider Bernard Harcourts article in the New York Times, in which he makes an interesting distinction between civil and political disobedience.  

“Civil disobedience accepted the legitimacy of political institutions, but resisted the moral authority of resulting laws. Political disobedience, by contrast, resists the very way in which we are governed: it resists the structure of partisan politics, the demand for policy reforms, the call for party identification, and the very ideologies that dominated the post-War period."

Clearly, successful political disobedience requires mass amounts of people doing some serious rethinking of the way things are.  OWS has succeeded in bringing masses of people together in acts of political imagination.  At this point I don't think the occupations themselves don't need to multiply - but the act of mass political re-imagining does.  

Harcourt continues:  "Occupy Wall Street, which identifies itself as a 'leaderless resistance movement with people of many political persuasions,' is politically disobedient precisely in refusing to articulate policy demands or to embrace old ideologies. Those who incessantly want to impose demands on the movement may show good will and generosity, but fail to understand that the resistance movement is precisely about disobeying that kind of political maneuver.”

 

Goals of OWS

The following excerpt is a discussion of goals from a sociologist of the occupy movement, Hannah Chadeayne Appel.  But these goals are not demands. 

"Some of the more specific goals of the movement are recognizably liberal and achievable within our current political economy: 

• more progressive taxation policies including a definitive end to the Bush tax cuts;
• new regulation, and renewed enforcement of existing regulation of large banks; 
• regulations on the mis-allocation of capital toward speculation and fictitious investment vehicles, steering it toward productive uses in infrastructure, the arts, and other paths that will create employment and the greatest good for the greatest number.
• banning of private campaign finance 

Some of the more specific goals require imaginative work:

• How can we end the false scarcity created in this moment of global financial panic? We CAN afford to build an inclusive society in which all citizens have affordable access to their basic needs. What would that require?
• What would popular control of the financial system look like? How can we democratize economic analysis?
• What would it look like for credit unions and cooperative businesses to play a larger role in our economy?"

Some of these later "imaginative" goals are already getting attention, thanks to the massive amount of energy that has recently been mobilized, which I think has been the Occupy Movements greatest feat.  Today is bank transfer day: Moveon has received a pledge from over 60,000 people to move their money today, but Credit Unions all over the country are reporting that membership rates have been quadrupling and even doubling in the last few weeks. Meanwhile, the treasury is about to be occupied, an action supported by many unions. 15,000 nurses have pledged to march, and they have specific demands: a tax on financial transactions.  And as occupations in some cities begin to take on particular identities, some are beginning to formulate specific demands, especially the occupation in Washington D.C.

No one knows exactly where all this energy is going. The actions that have taken place thus far are inspiring but small in comparison to really ending false scarcity and gaining popular control of the financial system.  The important thing is that energy is there and that we can do something with it. 

Enough with this "serious stuff"! 

Ah, such serious matters!  But it was joyful on the street... after spending time with many friends earlier in the day, I had been meditating and then marching by myself for a few hours.  And then a drum circle emerged, led by 15 or so mostly middle aged women with unending reserves of energy.  One person moved into the circle to dance, and then another, and I jumped in.  Soon, someone tapped me on the shoulder... my dancing friend Lara!  We both yelled in delight, "Of course I would find you here!"  And lo and behold, with thousands of people around, we found four friends in that dance circle.  You've already seen the video, right?  Here are some pics.

There are miles and miles of roads in the port, and people were gathered in various spots to block trucks from loading and unloading and thus block the international flow of capital.  I went walking off by myself to observe a truck blockage, and half a mile down the road, which was dark and barely sprinkled with people more dedicated to an all night blockage and potential teargassing, arrests, etc, I ran into this....

A TACO TRUCK!  

Yes, hungry protesters were overjoyed.  I didn't partake, but someone told me that the taco truck was there to serve the truckers, and probably made quite a bit more money serving us...

For those of you who have read this far, I hope you enjoyed my adventure and analysis!  Bon Voyage!