At an Occupy Wall Street meeting in midtown Manhattan on December 20th, a debate broke out about the general assemblies (hereafter, GAs)—the core decision-making forums of the movement and its most visible embodiment of direct democracy. The meeting was the second of its kind devoted to exploring the idea of a city-wide general assembly. About 80 people attended, including members of several OWS working groups and GAs across the city, of which there are now about a dozen. While some people seemed dissatisfied with the GAs, and perhaps even ready to dispense with them, others appeared intent on popularizing them even more. The discussion reminded me that this movement is growing and deepening its ties with local neighborhoods—yet as it does, it is encountering the challenge of how to accommodate new communities and support existing organizations that share its goals. While this challenge is still fairly new for OWS, it is one that has been faced and overcome by other movements before.

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As it moves into a new year, and an election year no less, the Occupy movement will likely be claimed by more and more hopefuls in the mainstream trying to benefit from it, and to sanitize it in the process. I guess that’s why I’ve found myself writing a lot lately about the movement’s radical roots, radical ambitions, and radical tactics—to remind us that if it had played by the rules some now want it to play by, it wouldn’t have gotten where it is in the first place.

For the occasion of a recent panel discussion at Columbia Law School on Occupy Wall Street and the First Amendment, I wrote this essay, subsequently published on the website of Harper’s Magazine. It argues that one should not take the movement’s appeals to the Bill of Rights too literally in legal terms, and that its tactics and aims have always been infused with an impulse more revolutionary than the law could ever accommodate. The whole discussion at Columbia, which also included WNV contributor and legal scholar Jeremy Kessler, can now be watched here:

Following that, The Nation published my essay “Thank You, Anarchists,” which explores some of what anarchist thought has contributed to the movement and why it deserves to be taken more seriously than it often is by those on the outside:

As assemblies enter our own politics through the Occupy movement, we should take care to recognize what they’re not and will never be. Even more important, though, is what they’ve already done. They’ve reminded us that politics is not a matter of choosing among what we’re offered but of fighting for what we and others actually need, not to mention what we hope for. For this, in large part, we have the anarchists to thank.

Co-opt that.

As Occupy Wall Street’s birthday party got going at midday today, the mood was mixed—not unlike the mood with which, in a series of improvisations, the movement began three months earlier on September 17. I talked with organizers I’d known from the movement’s first planning meetings, who were milling around Duarte Square, an open space a mile north of the old encampment at Zuccotti Park. Cars were rushing by along Canal Street toward the Holland Tunnel, spewing exhaust. The square was full; lots of music, planning, anticipating, sign-making, puppeteering, the works. Usual protest stuff. But uncertain.

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President Barack Obama's reaction to being "mic checked" by Occupy protesters on November 22.

Politicians of both major parties are increasingly addressing—or having to cope with—Occupy Wall Street. So far this has been mainly limited to rhetoric, though perhaps more tangible actions will follow in the weeks and months ahead. Meanwhile, as politicians discuss the movement and add their perspective on OWS’ goals, we’ll also be watching how the movement will respond to the political class in turn.

Last Tuesday, President Barack Obama delivered a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas that framed what is likely to be the central platform of his campaign in 2012. In language that echoed the some of the messaging of the Occupy movement, Obama contrasted the vast wealth of the “1 percent” with the plummeting incomes of the rest. Calling it “wrong” and “the height of inequality” Obama blasted the entrenched government systems and loopholes that shelter the wealthy while crushing the poor. He said “inequality” six different times.

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As an activist for over seven years, I have witnessed numerous progressive organizations—even entire movements—fall apart due to internal conflict. Many blame this phenomenon on government infiltrators, which undoubtedly have played a role in sowing discontent and provoking violence within our ranks, but the presence of infiltrators alone cannot account for the general divisiveness that even the thoroughly inclusive Occupy movement has fallen prey to in its weaker moments.

Those in need of an example can look no further than what occurred in Oakland during the epic port shutdown last month. Conflict between Black Bloc anarchists and nonviolent activists propagated an easily exploitable rift in the movement during what should have been its finest hour.

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A welcome mat at Occupy Wall Street's Liberty Plaza on September 21, 2011.

Sometimes people ask me to tell the Occupy movement it should do this or that. It’s tough to know what to say, since the movement doesn’t respond all that well to advice from the outside. That’s because it’s a participatory, relationship-based community. No one person really is in control, so it’s not like I can just pass some nugget of wisdom on to the secret leader. (Believe me, I’ve tried.) If you want a certain idea to get internalized in the movement, the best advice I can give is to participate in it. Join relevant committees, be patient, and try to persuade people there. Have fun. But be warned: you’ll probably change your mind in the process.

Also, there is a lot more room now (in “Phase II”) for active collaboration between the movement and existing organizations. See my post on the Occupy Our Homes action for an example of this. So another means of having your way with Occupy is to come to the table (or, really, the working-group circle) with some resource or activity to offer through an existing organization. Chances are, unless they smell corruption, the occupiers will be happy to back it up. And, of course, the more you hang out with them, and listen to their ideas, the more invested they’ll be in doing so.

Lastly, you can always just start your own Occupy based on the idea you have. After all, “Occupy Everything.” Get a group of people together, get them talking about the idea, and listen to what they have to say. Start taking action. See where it goes. No matter what, don’t sit around and wait for others, whether in the movement or in power, to do for you what you think is right. If Occupy means anything, it means the power is already yours, and it’s up to you to occupy it.

All this is actually quite simple, though considering the upside-down way we’re used to the world working, it can seem hard to grasp.

Jason Ahmadi of the War Resisters League carries a sign with a quotation from Gandhi on the first day of Occupy Wall Street, September 17.

At Religion Dispatches, Ira Chernus (whom I interviewed here a few years ago) ably responds to Ian Diaz’s New York Times op-ed, which argues that Gandhi would call for disbanding the Occupy movement:

[T]he Mahatma would have been amazed at the conclusion Desai draws: Dismantle the occupations and fan out to establish “community centers, schools, shelters, charities” everywhere. That’s a subtle distortion of Gandhi’s program of “constructive work.” It had nothing to do with charity and everything to do with creating alternative economic and social institutions while actively resisting the dominant, dominating institutions.

Where better to start brainstorming and experimenting for a new society than in Zuccotti Park and the dozens of other urban spaces where occupiers are building real 24/7 communities? Split those communities up into little teams of volunteers and their creative energy would soon be gone, which is no way to fulfill our responsibility to transform a society that is unjust in so many ways.

Chernus goes on to reply to Desai point by point—very much worth reading. But the whole question seems odd to me. This is of course a whole sub-genre in the debates about the Occupy movement, that of asking what this or that historical figure would do if suddenly transported to the present. Would Jesus occupy? Would the Founding Fathers? How about Rosa Parks? The trouble is, the reason these people changed the world is that they responded to their circumstances creatively, beyond a simple yes or no. What they did to confront the challenges of their time pushed beyond the either-or that other people were stuck in. If they lived in our time, they’d probably surprise us too.

Occupy Wall Street found a new home today—not a new park, or a plaza, or a square, but a house. Just weeks after the eviction from its encampment in the financial district, hundreds of occupiers joined local community members in a foreclosure tour of the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn through the rain, which concluded with a celebratory block party as a family reclaimed a foreclosed home owned by Bank of America. It was one of many anti-foreclosure actions taking place in communities across the United States today.

As the march passed, I heard a local woman saying, “This was a long time coming.”

For those of us who have been organizing and reporting on Occupy Wall Street for months, the afternoon was a reunion of familiar faces, of people who used to see each other daily in Liberty Plaza. But more visible than usual at Occupy Wall Street actions were collared clergy and members of the State Assembly and City Council. Together with locals and organizers with the NYC General Assembly’s Direct Action Committee, they were leading the marches and queuing the chants—all through the people’s mic, of course, megaphone-free. Along the way, staffers of groups that were once waiting-and-seeing from afar what Occupy Wall Street would do were now busily coordinating the action; among these are Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream, New York Communities for Change, and Organizing for Occupation. And this, it seems, is our clearest glimpse yet of what Occupy Phase II will look like.

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On Saturday night at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, just before the third act of Faust began, a man began yelling from the audience, “Occupy Wall Street! Occupy Wall Street!” It had neither the rhythm of a chant nor the participatory quality of the usual “mic check” that has been used to disrupt so much lately, interrupting public figures including Michele Bachmann, Scott Walker, and Barack Obama. (Maybe having the quorum for a mic check would have cost too many tickets.) It was first received with a boo from someone on the opposite side of the theater, but that was quickly drowned out by a round of applause—something like what a singer might receive at curtain call for a decent performance in a supporting role. The protester was carried away by the NYPD.

Presumably this comes as part of Occupy Lincoln Center, which on December 1 held a protest attended by Philip Glass, Lou Reed, and Laurie Anderson. That night, the Met performed Glass’s opera about Gandhi, Satyagraha. One sign read, according to the LA Times, “Gandhi would be pepper sprayed.” Like the other Occupy actions under the umbrella of Occupy Museums, these protests oppose “cultural institutions that serve the nation’s wealthiest citizens at the expense of the vast majority.” (It doesn’t help that people aren’t being allowed to protest on Lincoln Center’s plaza—apparently, it’s Koch-Blocked. Or that Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s media is one of Lincoln Center’s chief funders.)

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