It's hard to convey the stakes and satisfaction of the Bernie-Bloomberg matchup for people who were involved in @OccupyWallStNYC. The more I keep seeing old #Occupy friends campaigning, the more I want to start a [thread].
@OccupyWallStNYC For what it's worth, I once wrote a book about Occupy, and it's at lots of libraries if you want to get caught up on what happened now (phew) almost a decade ago: nathanschneider.info/books/thank-yo…
@OccupyWallStNYC And as the title suggests (Thank You, Anarchy), there is no clean line between Occupy and electoral politics. Some leading activists then continue to eschew electoral politics as fake politics. They are not not-right. But by far more have entered the fray.
@OccupyWallStNYC Let's start with the summer of 2011. One of several predecessors of Occupy in NYC was a small occupation at City Hall against budget cuts to social services. It was called—wait for it—Bloombergville.
The guy personified what they knew they were up against.
The guy personified what they knew they were up against.
@OccupyWallStNYC The call for Occupy Wall Street from @Adbusters targeted national issues. There was an international uprising going on at the time (e.g., Arab Spring, #15M). But the people who actually carried it out did so for local reasons. Many had cut their teeth fighting Bloomberg already.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters Why? He was more Wall Street than Wall Street. As mayor, he was using the financial crash his buddies had caused to strip needed services from people who needed them.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters But that was only the start. The instant Occupy hit the ground on September 17, 2011 (Constitution Day, if anyone cares), the story of the occupation could be shorthanded as the protesters against Bloomberg.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters He only appeared there personally once that I recall. But his presence was felt constantly, intensely, and violently through the NYPD officers who surrounded Zuccotti Park 24/7, arbitrarily harassing and arresting people.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters In mid-October, Bloomberg announced he would clear the park for cleaning. One of the major victory moments of the movement was bringing so many New Yorkers down there the night of the "cleaning" that Bloomberg had to stand down.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters And then, a month later, when the police finally did mount the attack that cleared the occupation, Bloomberg was the justifier in chief. Lots of people and their friends got beaten up that night. Lots of PTSD still.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters One of the major shortcomings of the earlier phases of Occupy was, among some, a lack of consciousness about how you can't engage economic injustice in America without centering racial injustice. Lots of young white folks didn't get that at first.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters Bloomberg helped them learn that lesson. The combination of the police brutality they experienced and what they learned about Stop and Frisk (#stopstopandfrisk!) revealed the shallowness of their earlier frame.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters In some respects, Occupy died because it had to, because people had to reorient and recenter around what became Black Lives Matter. In other respects, Bloomberg destroyed it.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters Or at least the physical manifestation. After the camps (by then all over the world) were destroyed in a coordinated repression campaign, activists spread out to various related efforts. Some got involved in electoral work.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters During Occupy, the overlapping political consensus was an anarchist grounded in direct democracy. But after the camps, many people embraced a wider range of tactics. Compromised? Evolved? Returned? Pick your narrative.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters Meanwhile, Bloomberg's chosen successor was defeated by a new mayor, De Blasio, a so-so city councilman who got himself arrested during his campaign and, after election set up a foundation-funded encampment to discuss the city's future.
@OccupyWallStNYC @Adbusters I don't recall any Occupy people going to that. But it did happen at a site (owned by @TrinityWallSt) that Occupy had sought to use for its own next site.
Anyway, fast forward to 2015. I covered my favorite presidential campaign event ever, which was especially fun because there was no candidate: vice.com/en_us/article/… It was organized by a subset of Occupy folks who were trying to draft Elizabeth Warren to run.
(I look forward to the day when political campaigns no longer need actual candidates to ruin them.)
At that event, one of the organizers whispered to me that Warren was probably already a no-go, and they were "already preparing a backup operation, still not ready for public consumption. Naturally, they call it Plan B."
I didn't realize at the time how appropriate that code-name was. I'm looking at you, @People4Bernie.
That was then, this is now. And now, the psychic spiritual forces (I miss you Marianne Williamson!) are lining up along old battle lines.
Movements like Occupy have no single, clear trajectory or teleology. Don't mistake me for saying this one did. They unfold in as many directions as people. I love the crazy spray of outcomes among people who were involved.
But Bernie Sanders knows what he's talking about when he deflects attention from himself to the surge around him. What people keep saying they love about him is he is consistent. He has been doing this for decades.
What made him the front-runner for the Democratic nomination now is the convergence of movements that have wrapped themselves around him and lifted him as a means of lifting the struggles that have kept falling under the batons of cops working for people like Bloomberg.
In the case of Occupy, those were literally Bloomberg's batons. And here he comes again, trying to buy the election, head to head with people who know the pain he is willing to cause.
While writing this, I showed my four-year-old a copy of my Occu-book for the first time and explained a bit about it. I said I was on my phone when I shouldn't be because what happened then is coming back. He saw Bernie speak last weekend. He said, "I want to go, too."
I have had too many bad dreams about Bloomberg over the years. They stopped for a while, finally, but now his ubiquitous ads have brought them back.
Welcome, I guess, to the slithery non-linear way that capital and movements interject themselves into our lives and histories.
I guess I'll end by quoting an Occu-slogan coined by an organizer now organizing for Bernie: "You can't evict an idea whose time has come."
