how to succeed in reoccupation without really trying

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-succeed-reoccupation-without-really-trying-1333804709

I’ve lately been getting the feeling that Occupy Wall Street’s past successes are starting to go to the heads of some people in the movement. There were, of course, the glory days of Liberty Plaza, and now also the spurt of momentum during and following the brief March 17 six-month-anniversary reoccupation there. But as the NYPD and police departments across the country make it quite clear that occupations of any kind will not be tolerated, the mood has gotten sour. The good old days, it seems, are not coming back.

For lots of organizers, I’ve noticed, the operating presumption is that occupation — something comparable to last fall but somehow surely better — constitutes a prerequisite to further political action. Consequently, a considerable amount of the energy of the most talented organizers in New York (as well as, evidently, in Oakland and San Francisco) has been directed toward failed reoccupation attempts. Or else the movement is celebrating its own anniversaries, not making occasions for new ones. The more conversations I have with listless, frustrated organizers, though, the more I start to feel that right now this occupation-first logic is exactly backwards.

This is a new time; the movement and people’s perspectives on it are in a totally different place than they were last fall. Potential allies expect more from the movement, I’d say, and so they should. People I know who were wholeheartedly behind it a few months ago seem to think it’s over, or it should be. The encampments, which Occupiers know as well as anyone sometimes turned into rather unsafe spaces, lost much public support. YouTube clips and statistics of Occupiers behaving badly in them have become fodder for a right-wing smear campaign that is gearing up for any possible resurgence. This matters; in some sense, an occupation must always be earned with public support, support that makes the cost in legitimacy too high for the state to mount an eviction.