Photo: Stacy Lanyon
When Occupy began, I had just moved back from Budapest, Hungry, where I had
been living for about five years. Although I loved living there, I
definitely felt disconnected from the politics in Hungry. For a
variety of reasons, I think there are certain barriers to entry into Hungarian
political discourse and political life that made me feel somewhat
alienated from and unable to connect with leftist politics in ways
that I wanted to. Moving back to New York in August
2011, I had in mind that I wanted to get more involved with politics in the
city, politics around the city, politics of the city, and it felt fortuitous to
me and my kind of life force that the Occupy Movement had got off the ground
right in September of the year that I moved here. I was emotionally, intellectually and politically really ready for something like Occupy to
happen.
I was supposed to go down there the first night, September 17th, but I didn’t manage to make it. I went a couple days later for the first time. I saw what was happening. I saw that there were these general assemblies happening every night that were using consensus process. There were these working groups, and it seemed, at that point, really open for people to be able to create what they wanted in that space. I was just very excited about the possibilities and prospects, so I started going down to attend nightly general assembly meetings and talking with people at CUNY, which was where I was based. I had started this program in Anthropology at the CUNY graduate center. I started going down there with some of my classmates, and very quickly we started talking about how we could use the political energy of Occupy to kick start a student movement in New York City.
I was fresh to student organizing in New York City. I hadn’t been there very long, but some of the people I was with had been student organizers for a while, and we got to conspiring and decided to open a call for a New York citywide student convergence. I think we had our first meeting in early October, which started this thing called the New York City Student Assembly. I understood it as a university education organizing focused wing of Occupy. We had weekly meetings and different kinds of working groups that interfaced with the General Assembly and Spokes Council at Occupy in various kinds of ways as the movement progressed. We were pretty autonomous in some ways. That was the main way I became involved in organizing at Occupy.
We organized direct actions. There was a student week of action in November 2011, which culminated in the New School occupation. It coincidentally took place two days after the eviction of Zuccotti Park on November 15th. It continued for a few months after that, but in some ways it had been politically fractured by the occupation at the New School because of the different kinds of politics and tendencies. I guess in some ways, the same kinds of political differences that were already percolating in the movement broadly were also coming to a head in the New School Occupation. On November 17th, we had this major day of action for Occupy. It was coordinated with the unions. It was a big march, a convergence at Foley Square. They walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. The student convergence of that same day, which we coordinated in conjunction with those big planning meetings, happened up at Union Square. We had a major contingent coming down from CUNY, from Hunter and also one from NYU and the New School. Everyone met at Union Square. We probably had about 700 students, which was a major convergence at that point of private and public schools. We went on a march from there down 5th Avenue. It became somewhat of a wildcat march. We were zigzagging in between cars.
Before it became a crazy wildcat march, what we planned to do was stop at the intersection of fifth Avenue and 14th Street. It was right in front of this New School building where there was this student space on the second floor. We had scouted out this building beforehand, and in conjunction with many students in the city had decided that there needed to be a citywide student Occupation. It wasn’t just protesting issues specific to the New School but drawing attention to student issues that were fairly universal at that point that affected us in all different kinds of ways—rising tuitions, skyrocketing student debt, policing urban campuses, spying on Muslim students. The march went right in front of the building. They didn’t know what was happening, and all of the sudden, the building was occupied. This was a couple years after the New School had been occupied previously. The president at that time had gotten a lot of flak for how they had handled that occupation. On some accounts, he was eventually forced to leave because of the way he handled that. The kind of political fallout that had happened had created a lot of dissent around his leadership within the University among faculty and students. To the new president, it was wagered that he wouldn’t want to kick us out in the same kind of brutal way, so the University was put in this position where they didn’t want to seem like they were against Occupy, and they also didn’t want to reopen the same kinds of problems that the previous administrations had, so they just kind of let us stay.
For about a week or ten days, the space turned into a pretty vibrant student organizing space. New York City Student Assembly had their general meetings there. The general assemblies that were proliferating across all of these college campuses in New York, like the CUNY Grad Center General Assembly, The Hunter General Assembly, the NYU Students for Occupy, were all meeting in that one space and were planning actions together. We were holding alternative political education, these masters classes with different kinds of organizers and intellectuals. It was a really vibrant space. However, as an occupation, it also had to govern itself in terms of what the rules of the space would be. You immediately had these different conceptions of what it should. Many of us wanted it to be an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and egalitarian space. There was also a tendency that was much more machoistic, which was not really caring to have process-oriented, self-reflexive kinds of discussions about the space, and instead was much more into “anyone can do whatever they want,” which translated practically into a lot of hot-headed, machismo saturated styles of organizing taking up a lot of space and alienating a lot of various constituents that had come together to solidaristically occupy the space together. You ended up having lines drawn in the sand between a lot of working class people of color from CUNY, women and non-male identifying people, mostly coming from the public University, getting really annoyed and upset with a lot of the more insurrectionist, more machoistic organizers who were taking up a lot of space in the occupation.
The political differences created a very fractured front for negotiating with any kind of outside body or the institution about how we would occupy that space. Eventually, the University offered the students their own organizing space for an indefinite period of time, which could have been a major opportunity for an autonomous space for city-wide, multi-issue organizing across public and private university. This is what a lot of people were pushing for, but what happened in the end was that some people didn’t want to compromise. They thought that negotiating with the University was some kind of sell-out or compromised position from which to bargain, so they basically destroyed the space of the New School occupation. They defaced it. They went into the gallery that we were already given as our organizing space, and they defaced that with graffiti. It was very clear what the gesture meant. It was a big fuck you to any kind of politics that wasn’t confrontational and that there should be no bargaining with these institutions. I think it was a tiny minority of people who felt that way, but they made a lot of noise, and a lot of people who would have been interested in seeing an autonomous city-wide student space open up as a culmination of months of militant and strong organizing were really disappointed that that happened, and it precipitated the end of this moment of city-wide, solidaristic student organizing in New York that had come out of Occupy.
We didn’t have this central space, so we splintered into different kinds of campaigns. I started this project called The Free University with a couple other folks from a couple other universities, a lot of CUNY activists. That was launched in conjunction with the Occupy campaign for a general strike on May Day. The idea being that one way to get educators out of the universities and into the streets was to create a space they can bring their classes to and their intellectual commitments to, but making them public, inviting everyone to make their courses public, teach public classes, perhaps changing their curriculum to speak about radical history, labor history, organizing history, and then also inviting non-academics into those spaces to engage in that conversation. On May Day 2012, we held the Free University for the first time in Madison Square Park. We estimated that five or six thousand people came through. It turned into its own autonomous project. We still have Free Universities here and there around the city. We had a week-long Free University for the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. We had one in conjunction with the Climate Convergence. Today, it’s more focused on creating spaces for dialogue in the city around contemporaneous issues that may not otherwise have a space for dialogue and critical intervention into them.
I was supposed to go down there the first night, September 17th, but I didn’t manage to make it. I went a couple days later for the first time. I saw what was happening. I saw that there were these general assemblies happening every night that were using consensus process. There were these working groups, and it seemed, at that point, really open for people to be able to create what they wanted in that space. I was just very excited about the possibilities and prospects, so I started going down to attend nightly general assembly meetings and talking with people at CUNY, which was where I was based. I had started this program in Anthropology at the CUNY graduate center. I started going down there with some of my classmates, and very quickly we started talking about how we could use the political energy of Occupy to kick start a student movement in New York City.
I was fresh to student organizing in New York City. I hadn’t been there very long, but some of the people I was with had been student organizers for a while, and we got to conspiring and decided to open a call for a New York citywide student convergence. I think we had our first meeting in early October, which started this thing called the New York City Student Assembly. I understood it as a university education organizing focused wing of Occupy. We had weekly meetings and different kinds of working groups that interfaced with the General Assembly and Spokes Council at Occupy in various kinds of ways as the movement progressed. We were pretty autonomous in some ways. That was the main way I became involved in organizing at Occupy.
We organized direct actions. There was a student week of action in November 2011, which culminated in the New School occupation. It coincidentally took place two days after the eviction of Zuccotti Park on November 15th. It continued for a few months after that, but in some ways it had been politically fractured by the occupation at the New School because of the different kinds of politics and tendencies. I guess in some ways, the same kinds of political differences that were already percolating in the movement broadly were also coming to a head in the New School Occupation. On November 17th, we had this major day of action for Occupy. It was coordinated with the unions. It was a big march, a convergence at Foley Square. They walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. The student convergence of that same day, which we coordinated in conjunction with those big planning meetings, happened up at Union Square. We had a major contingent coming down from CUNY, from Hunter and also one from NYU and the New School. Everyone met at Union Square. We probably had about 700 students, which was a major convergence at that point of private and public schools. We went on a march from there down 5th Avenue. It became somewhat of a wildcat march. We were zigzagging in between cars.
Before it became a crazy wildcat march, what we planned to do was stop at the intersection of fifth Avenue and 14th Street. It was right in front of this New School building where there was this student space on the second floor. We had scouted out this building beforehand, and in conjunction with many students in the city had decided that there needed to be a citywide student Occupation. It wasn’t just protesting issues specific to the New School but drawing attention to student issues that were fairly universal at that point that affected us in all different kinds of ways—rising tuitions, skyrocketing student debt, policing urban campuses, spying on Muslim students. The march went right in front of the building. They didn’t know what was happening, and all of the sudden, the building was occupied. This was a couple years after the New School had been occupied previously. The president at that time had gotten a lot of flak for how they had handled that occupation. On some accounts, he was eventually forced to leave because of the way he handled that. The kind of political fallout that had happened had created a lot of dissent around his leadership within the University among faculty and students. To the new president, it was wagered that he wouldn’t want to kick us out in the same kind of brutal way, so the University was put in this position where they didn’t want to seem like they were against Occupy, and they also didn’t want to reopen the same kinds of problems that the previous administrations had, so they just kind of let us stay.
For about a week or ten days, the space turned into a pretty vibrant student organizing space. New York City Student Assembly had their general meetings there. The general assemblies that were proliferating across all of these college campuses in New York, like the CUNY Grad Center General Assembly, The Hunter General Assembly, the NYU Students for Occupy, were all meeting in that one space and were planning actions together. We were holding alternative political education, these masters classes with different kinds of organizers and intellectuals. It was a really vibrant space. However, as an occupation, it also had to govern itself in terms of what the rules of the space would be. You immediately had these different conceptions of what it should. Many of us wanted it to be an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and egalitarian space. There was also a tendency that was much more machoistic, which was not really caring to have process-oriented, self-reflexive kinds of discussions about the space, and instead was much more into “anyone can do whatever they want,” which translated practically into a lot of hot-headed, machismo saturated styles of organizing taking up a lot of space and alienating a lot of various constituents that had come together to solidaristically occupy the space together. You ended up having lines drawn in the sand between a lot of working class people of color from CUNY, women and non-male identifying people, mostly coming from the public University, getting really annoyed and upset with a lot of the more insurrectionist, more machoistic organizers who were taking up a lot of space in the occupation.
The political differences created a very fractured front for negotiating with any kind of outside body or the institution about how we would occupy that space. Eventually, the University offered the students their own organizing space for an indefinite period of time, which could have been a major opportunity for an autonomous space for city-wide, multi-issue organizing across public and private university. This is what a lot of people were pushing for, but what happened in the end was that some people didn’t want to compromise. They thought that negotiating with the University was some kind of sell-out or compromised position from which to bargain, so they basically destroyed the space of the New School occupation. They defaced it. They went into the gallery that we were already given as our organizing space, and they defaced that with graffiti. It was very clear what the gesture meant. It was a big fuck you to any kind of politics that wasn’t confrontational and that there should be no bargaining with these institutions. I think it was a tiny minority of people who felt that way, but they made a lot of noise, and a lot of people who would have been interested in seeing an autonomous city-wide student space open up as a culmination of months of militant and strong organizing were really disappointed that that happened, and it precipitated the end of this moment of city-wide, solidaristic student organizing in New York that had come out of Occupy.
We didn’t have this central space, so we splintered into different kinds of campaigns. I started this project called The Free University with a couple other folks from a couple other universities, a lot of CUNY activists. That was launched in conjunction with the Occupy campaign for a general strike on May Day. The idea being that one way to get educators out of the universities and into the streets was to create a space they can bring their classes to and their intellectual commitments to, but making them public, inviting everyone to make their courses public, teach public classes, perhaps changing their curriculum to speak about radical history, labor history, organizing history, and then also inviting non-academics into those spaces to engage in that conversation. On May Day 2012, we held the Free University for the first time in Madison Square Park. We estimated that five or six thousand people came through. It turned into its own autonomous project. We still have Free Universities here and there around the city. We had a week-long Free University for the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. We had one in conjunction with the Climate Convergence. Today, it’s more focused on creating spaces for dialogue in the city around contemporaneous issues that may not otherwise have a space for dialogue and critical intervention into them.
I still walk through the city and just kind of pause at
places that I have fond memories of meetings or actions that happened and just
sit and try and recreate them in my mind. I feel like so much of my emotional
geography of the city is memories of actions that were happening in
2011 and 2012. Washington Square Park is saturated with that
because Free University has been there a lot. I regularly walk downtown from
the graduate center on these walks through areas that we’ve had marches, and I stop in Madison Square Park and also here in Washington Square Park. We had our
first major student assemblies on these benches. We had about 500 students
right here in this space using consensus processes and deciding that we were
going to form a general assembly and meet every week, and then met here. That
was the beginning. Times Square is a place I absolutely hated before Occupy, and now I can
walk through there and be like, “I remember when this space was a sea of
humanity.” Zuccotti is covered with those memories. I don’t go to Zuccotti as much
because it’s also tinged with a lot of sadness, but I definitely will stand up
on those benches to get the same vantage point of where I often stood when a
general assembly was happening.
I actually really enjoyed when musicians came to Occupy, like when Jeff Mangum came and played a set under the red statue, and we all sat around and sang along. Those are events that stand out as how I remember the space, but then also the bustling tent city that it become. There were different avenues running through the park. I really enjoy the special and emotional memory of Zuccotti Park, being there. What was so special about it? It was a space unlike any other space that we have in our urban existence where people come together to imagine a different possible political future. We don’t have that very often in our lives. As an academic in theory, you’re supposed to have it in seminars and workshops. It’s very, very different to have an academic conversation in a classroom than to actually live and experiment with it in an urban space. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that anywhere else. Maybe in moments of protest when it feels like anything is possible and you’re running through the streets on a wildcats march, but even then you’re in motion. Sitting and trying to make something happen in a public park and model the future was pretty fabulous. That was something I really, really enjoyed about the park.
I actually really enjoyed when musicians came to Occupy, like when Jeff Mangum came and played a set under the red statue, and we all sat around and sang along. Those are events that stand out as how I remember the space, but then also the bustling tent city that it become. There were different avenues running through the park. I really enjoy the special and emotional memory of Zuccotti Park, being there. What was so special about it? It was a space unlike any other space that we have in our urban existence where people come together to imagine a different possible political future. We don’t have that very often in our lives. As an academic in theory, you’re supposed to have it in seminars and workshops. It’s very, very different to have an academic conversation in a classroom than to actually live and experiment with it in an urban space. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that anywhere else. Maybe in moments of protest when it feels like anything is possible and you’re running through the streets on a wildcats march, but even then you’re in motion. Sitting and trying to make something happen in a public park and model the future was pretty fabulous. That was something I really, really enjoyed about the park.
I think it was important because I think it should be a part
of what we do more frequently. I think that that type of being in the world,
the kind of being in the world that has a creative/ imaginative relationship with
the future is something that we should have in our lives as human beings. I
think that people feel totally beaten down and not in control of their lives,
beaten down by economic circumstances or beaten down by political systems that
they have no control over. Occupy was a real antithesis to that. Being able to have meaningful exchanges about those
politics in a public space in a way that felt important, that you could
potentially see change as a real possibility, and that you might have a say in
what that change might be was a really powerful experience for a lot of people.
I wish that that was a part of our everyday lives, that we had more power over
our lives politically, more meaningful connection with people, more spaces
which to engage with all sorts of people, but also form long term political bonds.
It was an imagination of the future that was directly imbued with a sense of social justice. I don’t think we have that in our everyday lives either. We might talk about justice or yearn for justice or more frequently call out injustices that are happening, but very rarely do we get together and say, “Hey, what would justice look like?” Occupy was a space where you could be like, “We want participatory democracy because that would be something that is more just that electoral politics.” Or “I think this meeting is being run in a bad way. There’s too many male voices speaking, so let’s practice a different way of organizing speaking orders.” Practicing those everyday process-based practices of enacting justice, of step-up, step-back or progressive stacks, or really hashing things out in a consensus based organizing meeting: we don’t really have that. Meeting people half way and coming together and hashing things out with people in our everyday lives: I think that’s actually something essential that we’re really missing. For all of those reasons, Occupy was really important to me.
I’m not saying that having general assemblies everyday would fix everything. It may cause more problems than it solves, but I think having more spaces where people could actually come together and share ideas and have meaningful political engagements, that would definitely make the world a better place. Those are things that I wish were more real. You can’t have political meetings in public parks in New York without the cops circling you. You can’t sit on the grass at certain times because the grass has more rights and is more protected than people and their right to have political self-expression and organizing. I think that taking back those spaces through things like what happened in New York at Zuccotti or Spain in Puerta del Sol or Greece in Syntagma Square or Egypt in Tahrir Square, where you can gather and exchange ideas is super important.
It was an imagination of the future that was directly imbued with a sense of social justice. I don’t think we have that in our everyday lives either. We might talk about justice or yearn for justice or more frequently call out injustices that are happening, but very rarely do we get together and say, “Hey, what would justice look like?” Occupy was a space where you could be like, “We want participatory democracy because that would be something that is more just that electoral politics.” Or “I think this meeting is being run in a bad way. There’s too many male voices speaking, so let’s practice a different way of organizing speaking orders.” Practicing those everyday process-based practices of enacting justice, of step-up, step-back or progressive stacks, or really hashing things out in a consensus based organizing meeting: we don’t really have that. Meeting people half way and coming together and hashing things out with people in our everyday lives: I think that’s actually something essential that we’re really missing. For all of those reasons, Occupy was really important to me.
I’m not saying that having general assemblies everyday would fix everything. It may cause more problems than it solves, but I think having more spaces where people could actually come together and share ideas and have meaningful political engagements, that would definitely make the world a better place. Those are things that I wish were more real. You can’t have political meetings in public parks in New York without the cops circling you. You can’t sit on the grass at certain times because the grass has more rights and is more protected than people and their right to have political self-expression and organizing. I think that taking back those spaces through things like what happened in New York at Zuccotti or Spain in Puerta del Sol or Greece in Syntagma Square or Egypt in Tahrir Square, where you can gather and exchange ideas is super important.
I think our actions do help bring about historical changes
constantly, and I kind of subscribe to a version of history where people are
constantly fighting for their rights and constantly fighting for more just
living conditions, and they are constantly also making small gains, sometimes in
very circuitous ways. It’s not that they say, "We’re
fighting for this" and they win that necessarily. That happens, but often times
it’s, "We’re fighting for this." They don’t win that.
Aspirations are frustrated. People’s living conditions get worse. There’s
social distress and conflict with the police or the government or the state.
Somehow compromise is struck where some of the gains that they were fighting for
are met or more leftist kinds of politicians are elected, and then some small gains
are made through them. We have this circuitous way that history works, but
through our struggles we’re constantly acting as a force in history that
precipitates change, and if we weren’t, I think the world would look more
fucked up and repressive than it already does. Often times we also fail, but I think
that every march and every direct action and every protest is singularly
important, even the really frustrating ones that feel so blanched when you’re
standing in a pen and yelling at a building. It’s still important to be out
there. I think unions and other people who have proclivities to stand in
pens and yell at building could do a lot more to get more creative and effective in doing that. The labor movement has been long scared of engaging in
direct actions. That has been partially changed through Occupy, but I think
that even very formal marches and demos, all of it has an important role to
play in historical change.
In that sense, we’re fighting for the world that we want to live in. One thing that we’re lacking right now is real visions and imaginations of possible political futures, so instead of constantly being on the back foot and being on the defensive, we should be proposing things. I’m less interested in putting forward my ideas and more interested in creating spaces where those ideas format naturally through dialogue and public discussion, and that was one of the things I thought was special and should be recuperated from Occupy. We need a space to do that. I think that we do that in individual conversations in bars and in living rooms with friends, but I see very few political projects or movements today that are actually willing to put their necks out and offer imaginative possibilities publicly. Even if you have brilliant organizers who have all sorts of visions of what they want, they often times keep that to themselves or within their circle of friends, and very less frequently offer themselves as real programmatic forms of thinking about what might be possible. I think people are thirsting for that kind of conversation right now.
In that sense, we’re fighting for the world that we want to live in. One thing that we’re lacking right now is real visions and imaginations of possible political futures, so instead of constantly being on the back foot and being on the defensive, we should be proposing things. I’m less interested in putting forward my ideas and more interested in creating spaces where those ideas format naturally through dialogue and public discussion, and that was one of the things I thought was special and should be recuperated from Occupy. We need a space to do that. I think that we do that in individual conversations in bars and in living rooms with friends, but I see very few political projects or movements today that are actually willing to put their necks out and offer imaginative possibilities publicly. Even if you have brilliant organizers who have all sorts of visions of what they want, they often times keep that to themselves or within their circle of friends, and very less frequently offer themselves as real programmatic forms of thinking about what might be possible. I think people are thirsting for that kind of conversation right now.
I’d like to see the end of capitalism, but I’m not hopeful
that’s going to happen within my lifetime. I think we'll be moving in that direction. I
think we could see a curtailing of unbridled market forces governing
everything. I think people globally are getting sick and tired of their lives
and their aspirations and dreams getting trumped by the interest of the market
in every facet of life, so I think that there is a lot potential energy behind a curtailing of the unbridled
forces of the market. Meanwhile, as it gets harder and harder for capitalists
to accumulate through producing things, and this kind of speculative logic of
capital that is super destructive is getting more and more to be the central
medium of accumulation, there are a lot of forces in the opposite direction
which want to see market unbridled even more, unfettered possibilities for
capital investment in everything to be the rule the day, but those things are a
major contradiction. In some ways, it’s the fundamental contradiction of capital
all over again just playing itself out. I think as it has been for a long time,
it’s going to be the main contradiction we’re going to be dealing with for the
next fifteen/ twenty years.
People want to see a curtailing of those
forces because the market is not an efficient way of allocating food. The
market is not an efficient way of allocating housing. The market is not an
efficient way of allocating political self-determination, of countries or human
beings. I think as people are struggling to put food in their mouths, put
roofs over their heads and have political control over their futures, they're coming in conflict with the desires of capital and the market. I think
there’s a lot of hope for worldwide pressures being put against capital but in
ways that could see a major curtailment of those market forces over the next twenty/
thirty years. I’m hopeful that that could happen, and if that could happen
in conjunction with people gaining more political say over their futures, I think
that would be great.
Our potential is to live lives that aren’t steeped in
stress, anxiety, trauma, depression. That would be wonderful. I would love
to have more time to play music, read, watch movies, talk about ideas with
friends in ways that weren’t attached to systems of valuation and evaluation that
university imposes upon every thought. You know, "Is this thought counting
towards tenure?" This kind of freedom and wonder to marvel at the world, as
corny as that sounds, is something that we stand to gain.
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/
Interview by Stacy Lanyon
http://buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stacylanyon
https://instagram.com/stacylanyon/
https://twitter.com/StacyLanyon
http://stacylanyon.com/