Editor's Blog
When I first heard that the entire left was selling products under the Occupy name my natural reaction was disgust. I am very critical of liberals because I have experienced their hypocrisy on a firsthand basis. When I was younger I was a Black Bloc anarchist but since I didn’t belong to any collectives or coalitions I was quickly shunned by my own movement. It seemed like I was too much of an individualist to be hanging out in activist circles and that if I wanted to do something for myself as opposed to the whole I was simply unhip. Being poor meant that there was more competition due to my need for survival. I couldn’t afford to support Occupy when I couldn’t even afford to support myself.
When Occupy became this hot new brand I initially wanted to vomit yet it wasn’t long before I began to look at the situation from another perspective. Occupy Wall Street is a movement with no leaders. It is a movement of the people. It is a movement to overthrow the powers of corruption. Sure it is a fad and a bandwagon but it is also a way to do business outside of corporate power.
I would not describe Occupy as an anti-capitalist movement but a movement that epitomizes true capitalism. I say this in the positive sense of the word. By using the Occupy brand people are finally living in a free market. When you buy Occupy you buy the freedom to conduct business outside of major corporations. Occupy is the brand of the people.
Unfortunately there are millionaires who are using the Occupy brand for themselves. This is where the true corruption in the Occupy movement lies. I no longer have a problem with artists using the Occupy brand for their Kickstarter funds unless these artists are a part of the 1%. To be wealthy and claim that you are making art for Occupy seems to be manipulation at its worst. Are these millionaires that desperate for support from the 99%? So desperate that they are claiming to support Occupy Wall Street?
I think subculture plays a big role here with young people worshipping Internet demigods and social networking celebrities. I notice the usual suspects of Twitter popularity using the Occupy movement to cash in on social points. When I see people constantly retweeting their posts I get a bit annoyed. The topic of social status comes into play and it appears that we are being sold the Occupy brand as the demographic of cool.
It us now up to us, the people, to decide what Occupy means. We cannot pretend like selling products under the Occupy brand is not happening. We can either adopt the Occupy brand as the 99% or ignore the opportunity that thousands of people are already taking. It seems like everybody wants a piece of Occupy and if we don’t hop on the bandwagon someone else is going to do it for us. Let us not see this as defeat but as a new opportunity to thrive in a market without corporate interference.
There is no reason to leave Occupy to the academic elite. Are they not a 1% in themselves with their exclusive jargon and social cliques? Is this not a movement of the people? Why should we allow ourselves to be excluded because we are not hip to their language or social rulebook? Don’t we get to decide what Occupy means for ourselves?
By refusing to let the cliquesters have a monopoly on Occupy we are refusing to let them have a monopoly on freedom. We are letting them know that we are the people too despite not being a part of their hivemind. Nobody should ever be denied entry to a movement of the people because they are not a part of the hivemind. The people represent a diverse group of individuals who are striving to make their own way. Let us become the new Occupy as distinctive individuals who wish to overthrow the existing power elite without advocating a brave new world.
Rachel Marone is a writer and transhumanist who is founder of the Human 2.0 Council and the Extreme Futurist Festival, held in Los Angeles last month. Read about the conference at LA Weekly.
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20 Comments
Rachel Marone = Rachel Haywire?
OK.
As for the topic, the entire counter-culture is just as commercialized as mainstream, if not more. That always was, and always will be.
Occupy Wall Street is funded by Wall Street, like any other “revolutionary” “protest” “grassroots” “movement” here or abroad. Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, Syria, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, you name it.
“Occupy Wall Street is funded by Wall Street, like any other “revolutionary” “protest” “grassroots” “movement” here or abroad. Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, Syria, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, you name it.”
-could you elaborate, Anonymous? … how is the value that Occupy produces and represents (in terms of ideas) negated by what you point out? Is that what you are suggesting with this comment, that the value of working class protests, in general, and the Occupy protest in particular, is diminished because financial costs are not orthogonal to the system itself? As I interpreted this piece, Rachel suggests enforcing the conceptual and participatory authenticity (and purity) of the movement as a means of increasing the efficacy of its objectives. Thus, your comment (in the context of this article) is akin to saying that an argument a child makes while living at home is less valid and useful because the child lives at home…. I.e., I think you’ve missed the point.
“how is the value that Occupy produces and represents (in terms of ideas) negated by what you point out?”
Which value? I don’t see any. The king is naked.
Many of your criticisms resonate with me, Rachel. I think this is a great article. Thanks for giving me some new stuff to think about.
That’s a strong statement, Anonymous. Any evidence to back it up?
Thanks for your independent thinking and perspective, as usual, Rachel. Occupy is a huge black swan branding event. A brand is capital in itself–accounting firms put down actual money figures for “good will” when they do audits.
LA Future Fest was awesome! Thanks for that.
Francis Fukuyama has some good lectures on youtube covering human civilization as the progression of competitive aggregations. might be worth a watch if you are contemplating social groups. i think its about 3 x 1 hr lectures on the history of social order… from 2011
I have no problem with “Occupy” selling whatever they want to sell, but to characterize them as some sort of bottom up grass roots spontaneous group of idealist is silly.
Maybe that’s how some of them see themselves, but it is on record that George Soros funds them through his front groups, in particular, the “Tides Foundation.”
CBS reported last November that “Occupy Oakland” actually deposited $20,000 into Wells Fargo bank, even as their rabble rousers were out front vandalizing it.
So sell. Sell out. Sell in. I don’t care, but never doubt that you are working FOR The Man.
-Ken
Yep.
Wall Street occupies Wall Street.
The Revolution Business – World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8HaMtGrveY
Wake up.
How much stuff can I sell to them, and how will I know I’ve made enough money that I have to stop? I want to get rich, quick!
Seriously concerned about this on behalf of the OWS, and everyone, especially since the Obama and the U.S Congress passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the U.S military to detain U.S citizens, taken within their own borders, without trial or cause, for an indefinite period of time.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/homeland-security-coordinated-18-city-police-crackdown-on-occupy-protest.html
Wikipedia link about the NDAA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012
Why not the two percent? Or 3.25? 4.122584?
It’s ludicrous. Went to both NY and LA OWS and you see wealthy white kids who have never sampled poverty and so try it on like the latest jeans in order to pose a while. That’s normal. Young people do dumb things. That geriatric sixties nostalgia collectors that cheer them on and that the media does anything other than LAUGH at these rich white clowns slumming (In real mockery of the truly poor…) that staggers. Anyone who can’t see through this performance art piece that is essentially a suck up to fading Caucasians of two or three generations gone by…is a frigging fool. Farce layered in fake wrapped up in phoney. Sure, rich white bored twenty somethings need something to do. That’s what Outward Bound is for. (Their normal allowances put them near the top one percent for Gaia’s sake…) But earnest CNN reporters talk about “income inequity” over and over?
Oh and somehow, Jon Corzine and MoFo Global has somehow evaded their fierce selves. Wonder why.
But since laughing is good for your immune system, I welcome any OWS event. I haven’t laughed this hard since Wavy Gravy.
Exactly. Posers, hipsters, goateed intelligentsia, rich kids with nothing else to do. Funded by Soros and Co. If that’s “revolution”, then f–k it.
For those who wonder about the nature of the 99%, or what OWS is really about …
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Faces-of-the-99/125662194207824
OWS is NOT about poverty alone. By definition, the middle class and upper-middle class are part of the 99% — yes, those white kids who you think may have never known poverty. Though, perhaps, they’re carrying $50K in student debt and can only find work for minimum wage. Maybe they’ve never known poverty, but they’re looking it straight in the eye.
Or maybe they are well off, at least well enough off to keep clothes on their back, a roof over their heads, food on the table, send their kids to a good school. But there’s writing on the wall and it tells a story about the nascent instability of the economy. They realize they’re potentially just one more bad economic turn from a layoff, or foreclosure, homelessness, poverty. They’ve seen it happen to people they know, friends… family.
Perhaps they are wealthy, and secure … and maybe they just see the inherent imbalance in an economy that provides so much for so few, and so little for so many. (On that thought, I’d be willing to award Warren Buffet with an honorary membership in the 99%)
Such is the range of those who are the 99%…
And chances are, if you’re reading this, so are you.
I am part of 99%. So what? I didn’t authorize OWS to speak on my behalf.
And what about OWS primary funder, multi-billionaire George Soros? He’s surely not part 99%, he’s clear one-percenter.
Occupy protesters were pepper-sprayed, attacked by cops at night, attacked by right-wing goons, infiltrated by undercover police. They have faced non-stop slurs and open slander, legal action, and violent intimidation. They faced concerted (and constitutionally illegal) action in the US across State lines. Some have been assaulted, raped, and were even some ‘questionable’ deaths in the camps.
yeah sure, “Anonymous”, Occupy is “just part of the system”. Go fuck yourself, useless little nazi.
rachel, good points. Naturally every movement needs to eventually fund itself, and there is also the danger of cliqueism. But in the UK, at least, the Occupy movement covered a greater range of people than any comparable recent political movement – and many reports of even workers in the financial sector itself supporting it. After all, they know better then most what is *really* going on.
could it really have toppled Western Govts? We’ll never know – but for sure it got them seriously spooked.
there has never been a movement that is followed by 99% of people in history, in the first place. and there will never be. to talk on behalf of 99% of people is ctelling tales, at best. wrong slogan, wrong start.
when i look around, it’s hard to argue that people are sort of “awakening” or calling for a “revolution”. quite few people care about equality of capital distribution, and majority of them are trying to save themselves. i mean they are living in harsh economic conditions. if you’re not poor, (i don’t mean if you’re rich), if you have enough for yourself- you don’t care much about the rest. Majority of people are like that. Majority of people like to work, or like to do what they are told to do. call me cyncial but i really don’t think world may be a better place if money is equally distributed. not at all.
as for leftists, they can never save the world because most of them are not idealists. again, just trying to save themselves. to change the world you have to have ideals, not only ideas.
as for the middle east “revolutions”, it’s surprising that there are actually people who think these are the natural outcome of the situation which those countries are in and not directed by capital owners for some larger aim. history is not something natural at all. it’s a construct for larger purposes, and profits for the constructor.