"Thank You Anarchy" Author and Wall Street Occupier Nathan Schneider on the Movement's True Power

"Thank You Anarchy" Author and Wall Street Occupier Nathan Schneider on the Movement's True Power

Tuesday, 22 October 2013 00:00
By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview

Thank You Anarchy, Notes From the Apocalypse is a new, brilliantly candid and detailed inside account of the Occupy Movement as it grew to natural prominence and then was displaced by brutal police action around the nation.

What did it look like from the inside of the Occupy Movement as it reached its zenith in Zucotti Park and around the nation? Despite its pummeling eviction from public spaces, what is its legacy? How did it put the issue of economic injustice in even the corporate mass media?

Truthout discussed these issues and more with Nathan Schneider, author of the just-published Thank You Anarchy, Notes From the Occupy Apocalypse (foreword by Rebecca Solnit).

MARK KARLIN: Rebecca Solnit, in her foreword to your detailed recollections of the Occupy movement - particularly at Zucotti Park - defends the uprising from those who felt it failed. Solnit speaks, as you do at the end of Thank You, Anarchy, of the sparks that were kindled by Occupy, of it being a transformative moment. Your book shares that perspective in its final reflections, doesn't it?

NATHAN SCHNEIDER: I hope so. The book's subtitle contains the word "apocalypse," and I tried throughout to capture what I witnessed of that word - as in, the literal meaning of the Greek root, which is "unveiling" or "revelation." An apocalypse changes us irrevocably. We see something that, after recognizing it, won't let us go on with life as before. I saw this happen for so many people through the Occupy movement. They saw the depth of injustice - economic, racial, political - in US society more than they ever had before. They experienced a lot of violence at the hands of the police. And most importantly, they had a revelation about their capacity to transform politics from the ground up through resistance. Politics no longer had to be about just the options offered by politicians; it could be more of people's own making, made of their hopes and needs.

MK: How does a spontaneous emergency response network such as the Occupy Sandy response network in Brooklyn and other boroughs represent one of those sparks?

NS: Occupy Sandy arose at a time when many people - including some Occupiers themselves - had concluded the movement was over and dead. But the combination of a crisis and the quick deployment of the Occupy networks and infrastructure - much of which developed after the eviction of most occupation sites - made for a stunning rebirth. In this sense, it wasn't at all spontaneous. Occupy Sandy was made possible by organizing work that people had been doing during the months when the conventional wisdom held that Occupy was over. This is a useful reminder that powerful organizing and what happens to gain media attention aren't always the same things.

MK: Do you think that some critics are too harsh on Occupy's collapse as a public presence due to a national police pummeling because they argue it never got to the critical mass to topple the status quo, as happened in the Arab Spring (although, of course, things are pretty much back to where they started in Egypt)?

NS: First, it can't be understated that Occupy was the subject of a national crackdown - from the Homeland Security trucks I saw patrolling the financial district the night before it started to the near-simultaneous wave of evictions coordinated by mayors. Second, however, I think it's fair to say that the movement hit the big time without having the organizational framework to involve people at all levels of society. Same with the sit-ins at Tahrir - that's why it was only because the Egyptian labor unions mounted a nationwide general strike that Mubarak came down. It was because the Muslim Brotherhood and the military had the strongest organizations that they emerged as the main contenders for power. For its part, Occupy did a magnificent job creating a spectacle and activating a new generation of young people. Now, I think a major burden lies on the part of existing radical and progressive organizations in this country to follow through on the Occupy rupture, to translate its rhetorical victory into more substantive victories that will transfer wealth and power away from the 1%. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/19479-the-occupy-movement-continues-in-its-legacy-of-ongoing-resistance