The Future of Occupy Wall Street

     In the last few days since NYC evicted them from Zucotti park there has been speculation about what this means for the movement-will it begin to taper off or will this be a lightening rod? Obviously time will tell but I wouldn't presume it will taper off.

    Yesterday they attempted to shut down the NYSE and prevent the opening bell from being rung. This morning I overheard a conversation between two Long Island businesswomen who clearly work near Wall St who talked about how difficultt mobility was yesterday. One of them mentioned a friend of hers whose boss told her not to even bother trying to come in today-she's working at home.

 http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-and-tax.html

    Today CNBC is declaring that movement may have "ended with a bang" and if so many New Yorkers will be glad of that.  The title says it all, "Is Occupy Wall Street Over? Many New Yorkers Hope So?"

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/45355495

    "This morning at Zuccotti Park, where the movement has been based since Sept. 17, there are fewer than two dozen protesters."

     "Did Occupy Wall Street just go out with a bang?"

      "Certainly many New Yorkers would welcome the ending of the movement. In the past two weeks, I’ve noticed a definite turn against the OWS movement among my fellow New Yorkers. They’ve gone from being a fascinating new development to an annoyance to many."

      “Oh. Good. So it’s over?” one New Yorker in her mid-thirties said to me on Tuesday, the morning after the police cleared out the tents from the park.

      "It wasn’t over then. But today it might be."

      "It was always going to be a challenge to maintain the occupation through New York’s harsh winter. Yesterday saw an impressive turnout despite frigid temperatures and on-and-off-again freezing rain."

       "It was always going to be a challenge to maintain the occupation through New York’s harsh winter. Yesterday saw an impressive turnout despite frigid temperatures and on-and-off-again freezing rain."

        Let's face it. CNBC-CNBC for God's Sake!-is biased. They are the media of record for Wall Street  And when they claim many New Yorkers hope this is it, of course, the New Yorkers they have in mind are themselves first and foremost.

       Of course OWS sees it differently: “Look. This was never about sleeping in a park. It was about calling attention to injustice,” one protester wrote to me over text messaging this morning.

      To switch from the paper of Wall Street to the paper of OccupyWallStreet here's what they have to say:

      "Today, November 17th, over 30,000 New Yorkers took to the streets to resist austerity, rebuild our economy, and reclaim our democracy. It was our largest action to date."

       "Our will was only emboldened by Mayor Bloomberg's heavy-handed attempt to eradicate Occupy Wall Street; our brutal eviction from our homes at Liberty Square has strengthened both our resolve and our legitimacy. Together, we raised our voices to declare: "No to evictions! No to the 1% that profits from our collective impoverishment." We showed the world we are not a fringe group of naive idealists—we are truly a people's uprising embodying the revolutionary spirit of economic justice, mutual aid, and participatory, consensus-based democracy. We are the 99%."

       http://occupywallst.org/

        "At 3PM, thousands of students, workers, and other supporters gathered in Union Square chanting "Shut the city down!" and using the People's Mic to share stories of how banks and corporate greed have impacted the 99%. Simultaneously, Occupiers took to multiple subway stations in all five boroughs. The day of action culminated when the student strike, labor unions, and various OWS groups took over a number of streets in Lower Manhattan on their way to Foley Square before marching across the Brooklyn Bridge."

       It's like the story goes, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," where there is no contradiction.

      It does seem like the physical place of Zucotti Park will recede in importance but one certainly would be out on a limb to claim that it is over. As CNBC admits itself,

      "This might not be the end of Occupy Wall Street. But it is definitely transforming from a neo-shanty-town into something else. And no one really knows what that will become."

       It is also true that while CNBC is expressing it's own desire when it says many New Yorkers hope it's over it is true that some are griping that it's messing with their lives making things harder for them. Seems to me we are touching the Zizekean issue of normalcy. A protest movement may try deliberately to disrupt normalcy, but in doing so it is like the Black Swan event. I have spoken to some who want to see OWS get so big that no one can ignore it that no one can just go about their daily life.

     The advantage of this is you get every one's attention. The danger is that there could be a backlash if people can't get to work and back and live their lives. This issue of normalcy vs those who want to assault normalcy itself was played out in Egypt. There were some who even after Mubarak agreed to step down as it wasn't immediate while others said it was enough that they had to get back to their lives, work, etc.

     For Zizek what makes a political event authentic is that normalcy itself is traversed. But the truth is that whether or not that is so such a state can only be stood for so long. The best example of someone who tried to deny this was Mao with his Permanent Revolution. So the rhythm between protest and normalcy remains as Mao certainly didn't solve it.

     There is something to it that those who want to upset normalcy are unhappy with their own normal lives and want to lose themselves in something bigger than themselves. They are less interested in having specific demands met than some sort of transcendent experience they believe only protest movements authentically give.


      

      http://occupywallst.org/