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Occupy Wall Street Protests Are Reclaiming the Psychic Space
A good slogan captures the mood and acutely articulates a situation: "We are the 99%", "we are the crisis", or simply "no justice, no peace". As Lenin put it: "Every particular slogan must be deduced from the totality of specific features of a definite political situation".
In the past few months there has been a worldwide explosion of slogans emerging from strikes, protests, occupations, revolts, revolutions, die-ins, teach-ins, sit-ins, flash mobs and so on. Slogans, which seem to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, are slowly reclaiming the psychic space that brands have for so long attempted to colonize. The explosion of slogans is making a mockery of mainstream politicians' own attempts at snappiness: What hope has the recent Tory party conference tagline "leadership for a better future" compared with "occupy everything"? 
photo: Bob Jagendorf
But a good slogan can only emerge out of an organized political situation. The protests on Wall Street are notable for many reasons, not least the way the protests have spread out across the entire country, mounting a kind of populist anti-Tea party movement, but one particular tactic, captured on video, has been widely circulated: the "human microphone", where, due to the need for a permit to amplify sound in New York, speakers are forced to break their speeches into short, blocky sentences, repeated by the assembled crowd, then repeated by those standing behind them, creating an effect both deeply moving, occasionally funny and strangely cult-like, as videos of Naomi Klein and Slavoj Zizek demonstrate.
It's a little like the scene from Truffaut's version of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, where individuals memorize banned books and wonder around repeating them, except this time its collective and immediate: like the game of Chinese whispers but with shouting instead of mumbling, and direct communication rather than mishearing and incomprehension.
In the US and elsewhere, protests don't seem to be going away anytime soon. Despite mass arrests, incarceration, serious public order charges, jail, fines, deterrent sentences and police violence, despite authorities and the media who spend so much time, money and effort making protest seem pointless, unpleasant and dangerous, people are coming out onto the streets and, in many cases, staying there.
More and more people are becoming aware that protest works, that some protests will (eventually) make it onto the news, that solidarity and reclaiming public space away from security guards, cameras and police is a wonderful thing indeed. Attending a protest is often a lightning-fast lesson in the way the state and media operate, with their stock cartoons of "bad protesters", "naive hippies", "good-for-nothing students" and so on. When protesters come under attack, when the state shows its repressive side time and time again, people who may never have known what it feels like to be systematically treated as an a priori "criminal" start to make links, to criticize other modes of state domination.
As Angela Davis puts it, when looking back over her own imprisonment in 1970:
"There was a relationship, as George Jackson had insisted, between the rising numbers of political prisoners and the imprisonment of increasing numbers of poor people of color. If prison was the state-sanctioned destination for activists such as myself, it was also used as a surrogate solution to social problems associated with poverty and racism. Although imprisonment was equated with rehabilitation in the dominant discourse at that time, it was obvious to us that its primary purpose was repression. Along with other radical activists of that era, we thus began to explore what it might mean to combine our call for the freedom of political prisoners with an embryonic call for the abolition of prisons."
Massive worldwide protest is just the beginning; now comes the opportunity for real change. As one Wall Street banner puts it: "We're not disorganized, America just has too many issues." America and everywhere else, that is.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllNina's final paragarph says it all.
Decades of corporate control of government have created so many problems that listing them would fill a volume the size of a big city phone book.
The highest prioity demands need to be :
1)Structural changes to the financial industry, not only because they are critical, but because they can be implemented overnight by dusting off FDR's New Deal regulations that corporations and the politicians they own overturned during the past 40 years, and
2) Eliminating .ALL private money from political campaigns.
Until those two items are addressed, other reforms will be too easily manipulated and will not be effective.
"Eliminating ALL private money from political campaigns." I see - then private citizens will be allowed to speak in support of their own preferred candidate - they just won't be allowed to spend any money doing so. Meanwhile, campaign funds will all presumably come from the state - that is, the state and only the state will fund its own candidates. What could go wrong there?
Not nearly as much as is going wrong with the current system where candidates are funded with all that "private" money from all those "individuals"
Since this is a revolution, revolutionary questions should be asked. Questions such as "why do we need politicians if we the people can make the laws?"
+ 1 DIrect democracy is possible in an age of networked intelligence. Representative "democracy," the electoral college, etc, were moves by the "founding fathers" to shield the white male land owning elite from true direct democracy.
#1 should be taking personhood away from corporations.
I posted just after Ray and almost the same, so deleted.
Lenin and Angela Davis - that's what says it all.
I may be wrong, but I suspect you mean that mentioning Lenin and Angela Davis shows the perniciousness of this movement. If so, you are quite mistaken.
The author's point about protesters getting arrested giving them a new feeling of solidarity with the dispossessed in this country for whom incarceration is society's only response to their plight, an awakening Angela Davis experienced, is an excellent one.
Angela Davis still lectures at many Universities both here and in Canada. She retired from teaching just a few years ago.
So the measure of success of a protest is whether or not it is reported?
How about we measure successs by economic and politic change.
"not least the way the protests have spread out across the entire country, mounting a kind of populist anti-Tea party movement, "
BULL ! OWS is not a political movement except in the heads of 20th Century thinkers. OWS is a SOCIAL movement and for good reason, it's success depends upon growing the number of participants and including them in discussions thereby indirectly educating them. If the movement becomes political, it becomes divisive, not unifying. It is a gross error to view the OWS movement as an anti-tea party movement. That is self indulgent thinking.
It is a gross error to try to say ANYTHING definitive about OWS at this point. Political, social, whatever. No one knows for sure yet, and anyone who claims to is kidding themself. You are being just as self indulgent by wishing on to OWS your own agenda to the exclusion of others'.
It's a bit more than that Cathy. It's more like a 35 year journey in the study of the future. There exist certain change dynamics that are more sustainable than others, based upon the way they are applied. The application of decentralized techniques, i.e., broad based individual participation engenders more sustainable visions because they have been more broadly formed. A SOCIAL movement is unifying and therefore of more value in creating beneficial visions and outcomes. A POLITICAL movement is dis-unifying in that it restricts participation to only those who share a common political belief. Given the nature of the times we live in we may only get one chance to do this right. I believe the potential transformative outcomes of a unifying SOCIAL movement far exceed the more narrowcasted outcomes of a political movement, especially in an envoronment where money is speech. Also, I have heard the OWS movement described as a SOCIAL movement by the participants since it's inception. Political persons are attempting to hijack the movement for political purpose which will significantly short circuit long term outcomes. So it is actually my studied opinion coupled with OWS rhetoric that leads me to take this position as opposed to my own personal agenda.
"Slogans, which seem to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, are slowly reclaiming the psychic space that brands have for so long attempted to colonize. The explosion of slogans is making a mockery of mainstream politicians' own attempts at snappiness."
Like "Yes, We Can!"?
This is a profoundly important point. Our psychic space has indeed been invaded, colonized by brands, whether corporate or political. This explosion of the peoples' slogans is at one and the same time a form of blowback and the means of clearing out our consciousness of all the toxic rubble accumulated from years of MSM and corporate political propaganda.
"Massive worldwide protest is just the beginning; now comes the opportunity for real change."
Don't forget the opportunity for reaction from those in power. Expect a vigorous pushback, in my opinion. Perhaps a manufactured crisis (Iranian assassins, oh my!) or another "terrst" emergency (perhaps terrsts will go around drilling wells everywhere and injecting poisonous chemicals deep underground .. oh wait, that's the frackin' energy industry and thier regulators .. )