Rethinking Resistance and the Cultural Politics of Occupy

Abstract

This article examines the cultural politics of organizing in the Occupy LA movement. Utilizing ethnographic methods and the analysis of digital media sources produced by a variety of Occupy activists, this study focuses on how members of Occupy LA, in the post camp eviction period, made efforts to infuse a new kind of class politics among members of the newly and structurally dispossessed in the Los Angeles area. It focuses mainly on their efforts to build bridges among a variety of community based social movements during specific actions such as May Day 2012 and their efforts to ally themselves with organizations fighting the gentrification of Downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row in particular. Utilizing the theoretical lens of David Harvey's notion of “accumulation by dispossession” it concludes that Occupy LA has helped to open up new opportunities for rethinking the concept of “class consciousness” and its relationship to the structural dispossession of black and Latino communities. It also concludes that while this new politics is tentative and fragile, it has also opened up a creativity in thinking through the practical organizational issues of dealing with organizing across lines of race, class, and gender.

Notes

¹ David Harvey, The New Imperialism (London, UK: Verso, 2003).

² Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011).

³ Harvey, New Imperialism.

⁴ Jane Collins, “Theorizing Wisconsin's 2011 Protests: Community Based Unionism Confronts Accommodation by Dispossession,” American Ethnologist 39:1 (2012), pp. 6–20.

⁵ Sylvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004).

⁶ Autonomist Marxists argue against the privileging of capital over labor and focus on the agency of worker resistance to their exploitation. For more on this argument, see Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1979).

⁷ Collins, “Theorizing Wisconsin's 2011 Protests.”

⁸ Harvey, New Imperialism, p. 8.

⁹ David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London, UK: Verso, 2012); see also Standing, Precariat.

¹⁰ Nathan Schneider, “The Landscape of May Day in New York,” Waging Nonviolence, April 16, 2012, < http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/04/the-landscape-of-may-day-in-new-york/>.

¹¹ E. Fray, “May Day Speech,” Black Orchid Collective (2012), < http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/may-day-speech/>.

¹² Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London, UK: Aldine Transaction, 1969).

¹³ Gianpaolo Biaocchi and Ernesto Ganuza, “No Parties, No Banners: The Spanish Experiment with Direct Democracy,” Boston Review 37:1 (2012), < http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/gianpaolo_baiocchi_ernesto_ganuza_spain_indignados_democracy.php>; see also Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, “The Movement of the Indignados Began in the Lacandon Jungle,” Take the Square, Chiapas, Mexico, < http://takethesquare.net/2012/01/20/the-movement-of-the-indignados-began-in-the-lacandon-jungle-by-pablo-gonzalez-casanova/>.

¹⁴ Marina Sitrin, “Ruptures in Imagination: Horizontalism, Autogestion and Affective Politics in Argentina,” Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review 5 (2007), pp. 43–53.

¹⁵ Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006); see also Marina Sitrin, “Horizontalism: From Argentina to Wall Street,” pp. 8–11; and Marina Sitrin, “One No, Many Yeses,” in A. Taylor and K. Cessen (eds), Occupy: Scenes from Occupy America, Vol. 1 (London, UK: Verso, 2011), pp. 7–11.

¹⁶ Michael Buroway, “Grounding Globalization,” in M. Buroway (ed.), Global Ethnography (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 337–350.

¹⁷ Gabriella Coleman, “Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media,” Annual Review of Anthropology 39:1 (2010), pp. 487–505.

¹⁸ Orlando Fals Borda and M.A. Rahman, Action and Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little Field, 1991).

¹⁹ Sitrin, Horizontalism.

²⁰ Kara Zugman Dellacioppa, This Bridge Called Zapatismo (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).

²¹ Jeffrey S. Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

²² Sitrin, “Horizontalism”; see also Sitrin, “One No, Many Yeses.”

²³ Francisca Polletta, Freedom in an Endless Meeting (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002); see also Juris, Networking Futures.

²⁴ Dellacioppa, This Bridge; see also Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, Grassroots Postmodernism: Remaking the Soils of Cultures (London, UK: Zed Press, 1998).

²⁵ Raul Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements and Anti-State Forces, trans. R. Ryan (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010).

²⁶ Raul Zibechi, “A New Chile is Possible,” Counterpunch, January 27–29, 2012, < http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/27/a-new-chile-is-possible/>.

²⁷ OWS Facilitation Committee, “OWS Facilitation Training New York City,” YouTube video September 22, 2011, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = WfTf2db6YfI>.

²⁸ Occupy Los Angeles Facilitation Committee, “Guide to the Assembly,” May 7, 2011, < http://occupylosangeles.org/assemblyguide>.

²⁹ Juris, Networking Futures.

³⁰ David Graeber, personal communication, December 11, 2011.

³¹ Coleman, “Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media.”

³² Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, “Exploitation, Consumption, and the Uniqueness of American Capitalism,” Historical Materialism 11:4 (2003), pp. 209–226.

³³ Break out discussions occur during GAs as people get into small groups to discuss particular issues in depth and then report back to the larger group.

³⁴ Justin Berton, Kevin Fagan, and Bulwa Demian, “Oakland Port Workers Stay Home as Protesters Rally,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 12, 2011, < http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-port-workers-stay-home-as-protesters-rally-2396713.php>.

³⁵ Black Orchid Collective, Occupy Seattle Workers' Caucus (Seattle, WA: Black Orchid Collective, 2012), < http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/occupy-seattle-workers-caucus/>.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Arun Gupta and Michelle Fawcett, “Occupy Invades America's Storage Shed,” Salon, 2012, < http://www.salon.com/2012/03/02/occupy_invades_americas_storage_shed/>.

³⁸ “#M24 Part One: The Action,” Daily Occupier (New York City), 2012, < http://occupiedstories.com/tag/m24>.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Personal interview with member of OLA, April 2, 2012, Los Angeles.

⁴¹ Greg Reese, “Offspring of King's Dream?”, Our Weekly, January 12, 2012, < http://www.ourweekly.com/issues-archive/offspring-king%E2%80%99s-dream>.

⁴² Dan Bluemel, “A Night and a Morning with Occupy Skid Row,” L.A. Activist, February 23, 2012, < http://www.laactivist.com/2012/02/23/a-night-and-a-morning-with-occupy-skid-row/>.

⁴³ Alma Almendrala, Kathleen Miles, and Katharine Lotze, “5 and Spring Downtown LA Chalkwalk Protests Draws Riot Police,” Huffington Post, July 12, 2012, < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/5th-spring-downtown-la-chalk-protest_n_1670194.html>.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Please see < www.strikedebt.org> and < http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/>.

⁴⁶ Federici, Caliban and the Witch.