[P2P-F] Faith in the 99 %, What drives Occupy Wall Street?

Thu Oct 20 22:59:05 CEST 2011

Faith in the 99 percent: What drives Occupy Wall Street? by Starhawk

“We are the 99 percent!” The chant thunders through the streets, from Wall  
Street in New York City, where the Occupy movement began, to K Street in  
Washington, where high-paid lobbyists influence government, to streets in  
cities and small towns all across the nation. In hundreds of Occupations,  
ordinary people have been moved to fill parks and streets and squares with  
signs, tents, impromptu soup kitchens, intense conversations and lengthy  
meetings.

What’s going on? Pundits splutter about the movement’s lack of ‘demands’  
and coherent messaging, but sound bites and 10-point programs arise from  
central committees and top-down hierarchies. The Occupy movement  
demonstrates a very different model of organizing: emergent,  
decentralized, without a command and control structure.

While I have not had the chance to go to Wall Street, I’ve been to four  
different Occupy sites in the last two weeks, two in Washington DC, one in  
San Francisco where I live, and one across the Bay in Oakland. There are  
at least five others within a two-hour drive from my home, and more  
springing up each day. Oakland was inspiring-like a small village with a  
food tent, a medical tent, a library, a free school, and a built-in  
ampitheater in front of City Hall. Some others have looked more like  
homeless encampments. But all share a common heart, a revulsion against an  
economy and a politics that increasingly say, “You don’t count, except as  
something to exploit. Your voice is drowned out by money, your labor is  
expendable, your needs must be sacrificed to the gods of profit.”

At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this:

“Here in the face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which  
you do count. Your voice carries weight, your contributions have value,  
whoever you may be. We care for one another, and we say that love and care  
are the true foundations for the society we want to live in. We’ll stand  
with the poor and sleep with the homeless if that’s what it takes to get  
justice. We’ll build a new world.”

The Occupy movement is not overtly religious, like the Tea Party. The 99  
percent includes people of all religious faiths, and people who have none.  
But I believe its core message and ethic is profoundly spiritual, even  
prophetic.

Religion at its core calls us to charity, community, and witness. In part,  
our disgust with the system as it is stems from its violation of some of  
our most basic values. We are taught that a good person does good to  
others and offers service to the community. Yet we see the system  
rewarding the rapacious while dismissing the claims of those who devote  
their lives to nursing the sick, teaching the young, growing our food,  
building our homes, fighting our fires, or producing those things we truly  
need.

People come to the Occupations because they cannot rest silent in the face  
of so much that is just plain wrong. The Occupations give a framework for  
the protests that call the greedy and powerful to account. And they  
challeng us to create an alternative.

Disgusted with the corruption and ineffectiveness of government, we go  
back to the most basic roots of democracy-people sitting together in the  
public square, talking and making decisions. Of course, democracy is messy  
and frustrating. When people express their opinions, they don’t all agree.  
The movement confronts the basic questions of how people can act together.  
How does direct democracy scale up? We want to hear everyone’s voice, but  
when we gather in large numbers, how long will that take, and how do we do  
it without a sound system? Maybe we use the “people’s mike”-where the  
nearby crowd repeats the words of each speaker, and waves of echoers carry  
the message back. That creates a great sense of unity, but it takes even  
longer!

What do we do when needs clash-do we favor the smokers or the non-smokers,  
the drummers or the sleepers? How do we make alliance with people so  
broken by life that they are not very capable of listening to others or  
taking into account other peoples’ needs? Within the broad range of the 99  
percent, there are people with whom I agree and others whose beliefs and  
opinions I find frankly appalling. How do we come together on common  
ground?

None of these are easy problems to solve. I’ve sat through interminable  
and frustrating meetings. But I’ve also had moments of profound  
inspiration and grace. I hug the smiling man at Occupy Oakland who tells  
me, “There’s a whole lot of healing going on here.” I tear up as a young  
woman with a beautiful voice sings, “We shall not be moved” to honor an  
earlier struggle for Civil Rights. I beam at the calm, shy drifter who  
steps up to facilitate a big meeting and lets his innate intelligence  
shine.

What a magnificent experiment! How amazing, how exciting that in this  
world of increasing cynicism and alienation, thousand of people are moved  
to call to account the greedy and powerful and reinvent democracy in the  
public square!

The Occupy movement renews my faith in the human spirit, in our  
creativity, our craving for justice, our determination to root our world  
in love. So come on down! You are important. Your voice counts. You have a  
unique contribution to make. We are all the 99 percent.

Find your nearest occupation at:

http://www.occupytogether.org/

Follow Starhawk’s continuing adventures at:

http://starhawksblog.org/