San Francisco the best test ground for evolution in Occupy Movement

On Saturday, November 19, 2011, I walked down to the Occupy sites at Justin Herman Plaza and the Federal Reserve Building in San Francisco. I had been traveling quite extensively overseas, and had seen protesters in other parts of the world, namely, outside the Central Bank of Ireland in Dublin and St Paul’s Cathedral in London. It was important for me to visit the Occupy encampments in my city of residence, albeit over two months after the Occupy protestors first gathered and, possibly, towards the end of this stage of the movement.

The Occupy movement in the US captured media attention when protestors gathered in Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park in New York City in mid-September. Protestors targeted Wall Street initially because of its role in the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing recession. Since then, Occupy movements have begun, grown and been shut down across the country. Though the movements have focused on different messages, the underlying theme has been an identification of belonging to the 99% — a reference to the increasing disparity between the wealthiest one percent and the rest of the population in the US.

At Justin Hermann Plaza
That Saturday, the scene at Justin Hermann Plaza was mellow and orderly. The area was covered with tents. People — black and white, young and old — milled around. An older man who was clean-shaven except for an impeccably groomed silver moustache, walked around, holding up a sign that said Tax the Rich. At one end of the plaza, a wooden board displayed a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, globally revered for his doctrine of nonviolent protest:
First they ignore you; Then they ridicule you; Then they fight you; Then you win.

There was more energy around the smaller group protesting outside the Federal Reserve. A young man, his hair in dreadlocks, shook a beaded gourd in time with another person beating a drum. The signs outside the building displayed more radical — and factually questionable — messages.

One said: ‘The FED Is a Private Bank. Nowhere does the Constitution authorize a private Central Bank. We owe trillions to the FED! Why??? End the FED.” Another: “Now Hiring, No Experience Necessary!!!! Occupy. Put your guns down soldiers, come on home.”

Critics of the Occupy movement point to the lack of a clear message from the protestors, among other things. Supporters say this is the necessary first phase of a mass movement for change — the lack of structure or agenda allows for a multitude of voices that make up the 99% to be heard, and prevents the movement from being co-opted by the use of hierarchical organisation. However, in a movement that appears leaderless on the surface, organizers have emerged. And, technology plays an essential role. Numerous websites and pages on social networking sites provide information about the movement across the globe; minutes from general assembly meetings are publicly available.

Technology-enabled
Technology has enabled supporters of the movement to take part in the Move Your Money campaign’s Bank Transfer Day where on a single day — November 5th — the tagline “SPANK!” an abbreviation for “Spank your Bank” appeared in Facebook posts and Twitter feeds while people moved their money from large banks to local financial institutions such as credit unions.

This action started out on a Facebook Event page, but quickly went viral, inspiring media attention, over 86,000 online “attendees” and similar follow-on events. Individual efforts to protest against the ubiquitous presence of large financial institutions have gone viral through the use of technology as well. An example is a video on YouTube posted by an individual who advocates that people return credit card applications mailed to them from large financial institutions with suggestions for how to fill the postage-paid envelopes, including stuffing the envelopes with slogans from the Occupy movement. These actions will, obviously, be hit or miss, but they indicate a development in the movement beyond public gatherings and the important role technology plays within it.

When I visited the Occupy sites in San Francisco, what struck me the most about the protestors at both locations was that they could have been there on any given Saturday. The variety of people, the mood, the music, the messages, the communities (perhaps without that many tents) are a familiar scene in this city, whether it is in relation to a concert at the Embarcadero, the annual Bay to Breakers race, or an event in Golden Gate Park. San Francisco is a city that has been home to demonstrations against social and economic inequality, rising unemployment, actions of corporations and governments — the ideas expressed spanning the spectrum of small to large, pragmatic to paradigm-shifting, prudent to radical, realistic to impossible — long before the Occupy Movement initiated in Autumn this year across the country. And residents of San Francisco are, largely, well-versed in using technology.

On December 7, around 2 in the morning, several hundred police officers in riot gear, along with firefighters and public works crews, took down the Occupy San Francisco encampment, the last large Occupy camp standing in the US.

As both critics and supporters call for an evolution in the Occupy Movement, San Francisco may well be a good test-ground for new actions that engage the public beyond encampments.

Aneesha Capur is a San Francisco-based novelist, and author of Stealing Karma