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Why Tents (Still) Matter for the Occupy Movement
Last week, I responded to a 4am text and went down to the Occupy Oakland site to support the encampment during yet another raid. I saw the sunrise over various police agencies dismantling Occupy Oakland tents. That evening, I marched back at sunset with other protesters to take back the plaza. The night before, Denver and Portland authorities moved in to take down local occupy encampments, and a swat team stormed an Occupy group’s takeover of an abandoned building in Chapel Hill. The next day, I watched a livestream of the destruction of Occupy Wall Street’s tents.
But protesters have not given up on tents. On the day of a strike at, the University of California-Berkeley in response to police brutality, the Occupy Cal and Occupy Oakland movements converged with a full-sized tent on a large stick as the symbol of the union, and the movement. Soon after, the joint (largest ever) General Assemblies voted to re-encamp the UC Berkeley campus. At this point, thousands of people were spilling out of Sproul plaza, and activists came in and ceremoniously placed five tents in the middle of the crowd to cheers. By this point, the crowd had swelled with a perimeter of people, many of whom were alumni of the famous 1964 free speech movement at the exact same spot, as the annual Mario Savio awards were about to be handed out. 10,000 people encircled, and in effect, revered a few camping tents. Why? Aside from their symbolism, tents matter.
Occupy OaklandMany in our Occupy Oakland movement question the focus and energy on tents, especially on public property. Why does camping matter? Why not focus on big banks rather than further bankrupting cities? Why can’t we do something rather than waste time and energy on camping? What is missing from these debates is how place matters. Clearly, the orchestration of the police raids on Occupy camps shows that place does matter for the 1%.
I first visited the Occupy Oakland site and the myriad tents in front of city hall with my son Liam, 8, in the afternoon during its first week. We soon found the kid zone, where he practiced capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, with new friends. I chatted with other parents and caregivers about how we all need more collective childcare support. Then, we wandered over to the food tent, where local businesses donate food which is prepared and handed out freely. But Liam was particularly fascinated with the bicycle operated generator which was giving power to the camp.
The Occupy Oakland camp has been about many things, not the least of which is to build the type of society in which supporters envision. Activists are often portrayed in the media as “angry” or “against something” – which, well, people are given systematic inequality and the vast income gap, but the Occupy movement is much more than that. It is about creating what protesters often chant, “This is what democracy looks like.” It is about creating a more egalitarian and collective society. And it is this Occupy optimism from, well, the occupation that is spreading like wildfire across the country.
This institution building in a communal space is what many liberation movements have done around the world – from the communal villages of health clinics and schools with the FMLN in El Salvador to the childcare and breakfast programs with the Black Panthers here in Oakland. This organizing of local institutions is not just about providing basic services that the state or private sector is not – it provides a central and safe way around which people can begin to get involved in activism, as well as anchoring the organizing.
The occupation tents do not just have a political history, they are also tied to a more cultural phenomenon – from communal living from the 1970s to Burning Man over the past two decades. The occupy camps, then, are at least attempting to create the inclusive and shared society they envision for the future, rather than waiting for it to happen after some political shift from the individualistic and privatized society that the occupy movement opposes.
Similarly, native political movements often fight against development projects that take over sacred spaces which leave these communities without a common place for sacred rituals. The occupy camps provide a site for ritual, as well. When UC Berkeley students had their tents demolished a second time, they continued to use the same space for even more creative embodiment of tents. First, they brought hundreds of books to Sproul Plaza and turned them over on the ground as symbolic tents. Then, they put tents up on helium balloons and floated them in the air.
An occupied public space also invites a broad, inclusive group of people, not just people who feel allegiance to one group’s physical space. In my documentary filmmaking days, I tried to have film screenings in public venues, such as an art house theater, rather than only in churches or union halls, which will attract one type of audience. Similarly, by having Occupy Oakland, Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Anywhere in an open public space, the movement is more welcoming to people who just want to stop by to check it out. This happened recently at an Occupy Chapel Hill, when a woman who had just seen Jesse Jackson talk about the importance of the movement, came by to check it out. As with me, this can lead to more and more involvement over time.
This public space for General Assemblies and direct democracy is also critical. These are when proposals are discussed, debated and voted on among hundreds, sometimes thousands, as to what Occupy Oakland, in this case, should do next. It is mesmerizing to participate in such mass democracy in action in which anyone can speak and make proposals, rather than backroom deals and decision-making by the highest paid lobbyists.
More broadly, though, the message that the “occupy” in the Occupy movement sends to the strong believers in individual property rights, who, by the way, also tend to be the 1% who owns most of the property, is that we are taking back that which we have labored – whether a park in Manhattan, in front of city hall in Oakland or an abandoned car dealership in Chapel Hill, NC. Theorist Antonio Gramsci wrote over 80 years ago that these “wars of position” are a way not only to anchor political organizing but help inspire and mobilize the general public.
Tents are not just about camping or even squatting. They are about the significance of place and questioning private ownership. The 99% recognizes this, which is why the Occupy movement and the encampment tactic have spread like wildfire. Wall Street and the Department of Homeland Security recognize this, which is why they have reportedly orchestrated raids of the encampments. What the 1% does not understand is that dismantling the tents will not put out our fire. Our longing for collective place – and action – are much deeper than camping out. Pass the collective s’mores, please.
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36 Comments so far
Show AllWhen I read the your topic, I thought that you were talking about tents in Palestine, those Palestinians trying to keep Israelis from stealing their land, but, alas, we are talking about the U.S. Maybe we can do better with the "tent" scenario than Palestinians have done with theirs...
Thanks for this, Jen.
You know, there is another 99/1% reverse paradigm at work these days. It is the 1% of media that gets it and the other 99%, like Randi Rhodes (especially), Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, et al, who are clueless.
Go Occupy!
Ya, Moi, no kidding about that. Except in the case of Israel, their occupation is a perverse success... accomplished illegally and with much violence.
Looked at broadly, perhaps the 'occupy' movement is really calling attention to all these deeper darker forces that have been occupying our banks, government and minds surreptitiously over the last decades...
Hey, Zeofredo,
With the help of the U.S., Israel has had a perverse success! Without us, they would have faltered.
I agree, the "Occupy" movement calls attention to the deeper, darker forces that occupy our banks, governments, and mind.
Why else would all of the "powers that be" totally ignore Ron Paul in every avenue in every universe? And why else would it have been necessary to assassinate JFK? He legitimized currency other than the Federal Reserve. He really tried to save us from the FEDERAL RESERVE! HE WAS ASSASSINATED!
Here in Greece we've "freecamped" on tens of beaches, islands, forests for over a decade. Freecamping, as opposed to staying in organized campgrounds, is alive and well in Greece, although more restricted than it used to be. I can definitely relate to the sense of community the author speaks about. We established the same every summer when we would camp for up to 5 weeks at a time. Some of our best friends and enduring relationships were from that decade of freecamping. Actually living in a community when the only thing separating you from the elements, both natural and social, is a thin piece of tent forces all of the community to be "on their best behavior". We have also endured a few incidents when a camper did something completely out of line that violated the communal trust. In both incidents (one guy took someone else's tent down, another guy attacked me with a plastic table under the completely mistaken assumption that my dog bit his girlfriend) the community of freecampers was successful in convincing them how they violated the trust and that it was necessary for them to pack up and go.
Here in the states, National Forests offer free camping.
The Rainbow People are a wandering community that moves seasonally from forest to forest. Their kitchens, open to any and everyone, are often elegantly decorated with natural materials found at hand. They self "police", more and less, and the rangers don't like them because the rookies leave messes behind.
There is a time limit to length of stay in one spot, but for individuals and one vehicle groups, it is near impossible for them to enforce.
Wonderful!
Tents have special meaning for me, a lifelong campaholic. They represent freedom; free to wander to new places, meet new people, see and feel new Natural wonders. Home was where I set it up. Lawn chairs and campfires were my american dream, and the lawn chairs were optional.
I love the symbolism and am going to donate a brand new Coleman four person tent that was given to me last fall, but haven't even setup to look at. I'm thinking about putting the word HOME, the O a peace sign, on it.
Indeed, I am always happiest when outside camping out.
If things keeping heading in the direction they are economically living in a tent for millions isn't going to be some political statement of community, but the ONLY place these folks will be able to afford. I don't think it would be some joyous expression of cultural freedom at that juncture. Go tell the billions living in the wretch cardboard and tin slums of our world's mega cities what they think about a few thousand Americans living in tents as a symbolic gesture of freedom no less and my guess is they 'd be curious at why?
It is those very same cardboard and tin dwellers that Occupy is aligning with and a strength in the symbolism. The 99% doesn't end at the u.s. borders.
People being forced into tents is already the reality.
As the numbers grow, so will Occupy's.
Well in actuality, many of those currently living in Occupy encampments have been foreclosed on and have been homeless. As the article mentions the encampments provide food, shelter and community for anyone, a self-regulating community. These are essential services. Also as the article mentions Occupy encampments provide a visible convenient 24/7 place for the curious to come and learn, interact and give and take. The article mentions, with the reactionary response of DHS attacks, but it needs to be emphasized, the raw permanent ( in intent) seizure of power and place, which threatens the state more than one million demonstrations or petitions combined.
Thank you Jen for so articulately expressing the value of space and tents in the Occupy Movement and in any movement where the people are seeking to reaffirm their collective experience.
Buck I liked reading about your appreiation of camping and your possible donation of a four person tent to the Occupy Movement. That would be a generous positive move. I want to note also that my personal experience going to a Rainbow Gathering in 1990 was fantastic. I took my two sons then about ten and they were amazed and had great time. I want to add that in preparation for the annual event some Rainbow Family people go to the site weeks in advance and at the end of the gathering people stay behind to make sure the camped in areas are restored. Whatever mess a rookie might leave behind is generally cleaned up or corrected by those who are dedicated to the Rainbow Family and Mother Earth. Peace and hugs
Finally an article that gets why reclaiming communal space is important on CD. The tents and long term physical presence is at the very center of the occupation and why it's call an OCCUPATION. Whether this movement succeeds or not will be whether occupations spread to factories as a basis for general strikes, or fades back into bourgeois day protests.
The camps are also an excellent way to overcome classicism and racism as people have to live together and work together, where as day protests tend towards cliques of people who arrive as small groups to the protest and then leave in those same small group when the protest is over.
I don;t think you understand what the word occupation means.
It doesn't mean mere physical presence, the occupied have that too.
What it means to occupy is to take and hold political power through miltary aggression and presence, ie feet on the ground and feet in the offices of government.
I don't see any power coming from the OWS movement.
NO! You are wrong occupy is a real word, with a real meaning, which is occupying physical space like the workers who took over and self managed their own factories in Argentina did. This will require a class consciousness that I think most Americans frankly aren't capable of yet.
Treating occupation as a metaphor and retreating into campus elite organized day protests is a recipe for failure.
"I saw the sunrise over various police agencies dismantling Occupy Oakland tents"
One might expect to see Korporatist thugs trying to dismantle a spearheading event of the korporate state's very own dismantling. But I think the korporatist's kause is lost. What do you think? Remember, we're dismantling more than a 20th century Merkan system. We're dismantling a system that started over three hundred years ago with the British East India Company. Thugs die hard! Our alternative is beautiful, ehh? Craftsman guilds and cottage industries, free information and universal rights - the Reign of the Rabble! I guess you can see specifically when and why we need to organize and when and why we must not!! As for Berkeley, I don't see a role for it!
"Tents are not just about camping or even squatting. They are about the significance of place and questioning private ownership."
I think it is critical to focus on how people accumulate property: money. Private ownership isn't the issue, socialized risk and losses are.
As a property owner, if OWS pursues the "private property rights have no bearing in the face of the 1st Amendment" line of reasoning, they are doomed.
I think it is far more reasonable to express that the framer's of the Constitution did not do their work after one, 20 minute march through town - they assembled. Focus on assembly for the express purpose of exploring ways to address your grievances, and you'll have a much easier time (though, obviously not pain free).
If money is speech, so are tents.
I am a VERY strong believer in property rights. I own my home, my castle, and will defend it. And, I "own" my share of the pubic commons and believe in it just as strongly. There is nothing wrong with property rights...so long as we realize who owns that public property...and it's NOT the 1% unless they choose to come camp with us.
The struggle of the OWS movement is our struggle. This writer is right on the mark. Back this struggle! As Steve Jobs once said "follow your heart and intuition. . ."
The struggle of the OWS movement is our struggle. This writer is right on the mark. Back this struggle! As Steve Jobs once said "follow your heart and intuition. . ."
I agree, my wife and I worked very hard and steady thirty years to pay our home off. We raised one child and sent her through college, thank god she wanted to learn and now is a marine biologist with a job. But our property taxes are now more than our rent was on the house we rented before we bought our house. the rent on that house now would be way beyond our budget. I can't imagine how young people have the slightest chance of success these days. The payments on a home are ten times what we paid, but wages have not grown, At least not for the working class, soon the banks and wall street billionaires will own nearly every home due to illegal. and immoral practices. Our republicans are crying that we are trying to over regulate the banks and wall street.
We paid our taxes, we played by the rules, we own those fucking parks, those kids at the colleges are our children, the cops are just as sold out bastards as the tea party. Put the tazers and the chemical weapons up the cops asses and the asses of the Murdocks and Koch brothers, and the fucking top one percent and every one of the senators and representatives that are stealing our country, republicans and a few democrats.
University of California campus chancellors vet their campus police protocols. Campus UCPD
report to chancellors and take direction from their chancellor. Chancellors knowledgeable that pepper spray and use of batons included in their campus police protocols.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and UC Davis Chancellor are in dereliction
of their duties.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and UC Davis Chancellor need to quit or be
fired for permitting the brutal outrages on students protesting tuition increases
and student debt
Opinions? Email the UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu
In Minnesota, sleeping and tents were banned at OWS to "protect" protesters. Now on Black Friday there are many businesses allowing people to camp out with tents in front of their stores for their consumerism. Why are the police not arresting people for sleeping or taking down tents from the people in front of the best buys and Wal-Mart’s for their protection? What hypocrisy!
I'd say tent makers are making a pretty good living these days...
"The occupy camps provide a site for ritual" The importance of this statement cannot be overemphasized.
"This public space for General Assemblies and direct democracy is also critical. These are when proposals are discussed, debated and voted on among hundreds, sometimes thousands, as to what Occupy Oakland, in this case, should do next. It is mesmerizing to participate in such mass democracy in action . . . "
Public space for democracy often gets names like parliament, senate, congress, city council and the like. These are places for public discussion yet for the most part the 1% has attained control of these places and uses this control to keep the voices and thoughts of the 99% out. This leaves the 99% with a need for a place for democracy, with a need to create public spaces for debate.
Tents are symbolic of our claim to control some public space where we can debate. The tents establish a claim to the space.
The tents also serve the purpose of making attending the debate accessible. Without the tents we need another method to make being at the debate possible for all who wish to take advantage of Article 20.1 of the UN declaration of Human Rights which states "Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association." As not everyone can pay the going rate for even cheap hotel accommodation in the city near the public space where the debate is to take place, the tents enable us to be there for the debates and discussions. I am arguing that if we are not allowed tents or other affordable accommodation near this public place then our access to this assembly is being compromised and denied. In this sense the tents symbolize a practical commitment to ensure that the assembly is for everyone.
I offered up this comment earlier:
Dissent in the form of occupying what is left of "public" space has been CRUSHED in cities throughout the US by the police in a brutal, violent, paramilitary, nationally-coordinated ATTACK.
We must ask the question: What have we LOST by not being able to occupy public space in an ongoing, energizing, peaceful, educational protest in public spaces throughout the US?
1) We have lost the right to work with people who have nowhere else to go. We have lost a bridge with the dispossessed who were a feature of those encampments.
2) We have lost the ability to coordinate a series of organizing events and activities in, and through, a public venue which was open to passersby, the curious, and the poor.
3) We lost the ability to share resources such as computers, a library, expertise, and experience through public space.
4) We lost a space that served as a magnet, a portal that many people passed through, through which many people came and went, learned, shared, and experienced direct democracy.
5) Many participants lost their tents and all of their possessions, and for some of those people, that was all they had.
The arrogance of the privileged is on display in this disconnection from the home that were these occupations, in these theoretical discussions about the 'tactic' of being 'dispersed' as an advantage, but what about those who were beaten? What about those who arrested? What about those who were beaten, arrested, and had all their possessions stolen? Tell those people about this great victory.
Ask yourselves: How could the brutal repression by the state be a victory? It is true that many of us are still around. But it would be foolish not to note, and note well, what has been lost, and what we have lost forever if we cannot hold on to public space. We are the dispossessed. We are the homeless. We are the indigenous people. Maybe some of us still live in boxes, but corporations will make slaves of us all; corporations and their police have a goal too: Occupy everything.
Odd, isn't it?
Last week the Occupy DC library "book club" had a discussion on Margaret Kohn's book "Radical Spaces: Building the House of the People" Anna, one of the participants made the comment that she was concerned that the occupation was becoming too "comfortable" suggesting that camping out in the tents was just a beginning and not an end in itself.
What she was saying really clicked for me when I read: "The Camp is the World: Connecting the Occupy Movements and The Spanish May 15th Movement" By Luis Moreno-Caballud and Marina Sitrin, AlterNet Posted on November 20, 2011;
http://www.alternet.org/story/153145/the_camp_is_the_world%3A_connecting_the_occupy_movements_and_the_spanish_may_15th_movement
As important as the tent occupations are in not just creating "space" but a truly "radical space" and by extension "radicalizing consciousness" we cannot become content - or comfortable with just tent occupations. As Marina Sitrin elucidates in her excellent book "Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina" the next step in the new American revolution is moving the occupations into the neighborhoods, and creating permanent radical spaces that are revolutionary in building the more permanent social connections that can provide viable alternatives for people to meet their most basic needs, food, medical care, work (not wage slavery), peaceful communities and solidarity. Yes the tent occupations and place are very important but only if we can take the next step and radicalize the communities around them.
Dear commenters! Some of you are getting waaay ideological, some of you are just playing in the street, some of you are homeless and jobless and carless and hopeless for the first time, and just starting to realize that the government you've helped to vote in was lying to you.
Critical to ALL of you is the need to be very discerning, very careful in your own words and your own analysis, because LANGUAGE is what you don't have yet.
LEARN. Ask questions, get inside the heads of every person you don't quite understand. ABANDON rules of social engagement. Dismiss no one for their appearance, or roughness. Many of us have slightly misshapen personalities; after all, we grew up in the Great American Myth, which has now crept away from us.
We're all looking for a brave new world (except, of course, the one percent who expect to live on our backs forever.)