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its shift from a proactive to a defensive approach. Originally, the “occupying” of Zuccotti Park that launched the movement had created powerful visual imagery. Similar encampments in other cities created visibility and facilitated recruitment. But once local Occupy chapters were established, there was no reason to divert the focus from Wall Street abuses and income inequality to battling with local Officials over the right to camp. These struggles muddied the movement’s goals. Many Occupiers wanted to sleep in tents in public spaces because they lacked a place to live. But once the public saw Occupy camps as homeless encampments rather than as vehicles for economic justice, support fell. That “the 99 percent” did not support camping in public parks or plazas meant that Occupy had adopted a political position at odds with much of its purported base.
Prioritizing public encampments also caused other problems. First, it relegated those unable to live outdoors in tents to reduced roles in the movement. Second, it turned Occupy from being broadly inclusive into a group led by a small, unrepresentative fraction of “the 99 percent.” Third, it raised questions about Occupy’s moral authority to seize public plazas funded by taxpayer dollars for a sustained period, denying access to those among “the 99 percent” who wanted to use the space. No democratic process supported Occupy’s ongoing seizure of public spaces, raising questions about its legitimacy that could have been avoided had private property been occupied instead.
The battles over public camping made even less sense considering that the arrival of winter would make Occupy’s use of outdoor space as headquarters infeasible. Kalle Lasn, the founder of Adbusters, acknowledged this fact on November 14 when he wrote, “Now that winter is approaching, I can see this first wild, messy, crazy occupation phase kind of slowly winding down and the second phase will begin. Some people will continue to sleep in the snow and inspire all of us, but in the meantime many of us will go home and we will resurface next spring.” Lasn suggested that December 17, the three-month anniversary of the Occupy movement, was a good time to begin planning a spring renewal: “We use the winter to brainstorm, network, build momentum so that we may emerge rejuvenated with fresh tactics, philosophies, and a myriad projects ready to rumble next Spring.” Displaying his continued confidence in the movement’s future, Lasn added, “Permit me to be grandiose for a moment, but I can feel it—I can feel this movement is the beginning of a deep transformation of capitalism. It’s a game changer.”15
Lasn’s idea of declaring victory and regrouping for future struggles showed a strategic savvy that many Occupy activists by that time appeared to lack. When police cleared Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park in an early-morning raid on November 15, they did the movement a favor; the activists’ forced ouster avoided feelings of failed personal commitment that having to leave Zuccotti due to the cold would have caused. After completely changing the way politicians, the traditional media, and much of the public perceived and talked about inequality in the United States, the Occupy movement needed time to recharge its batteries and refocus its agenda.
Regaining the Offensive
Although 2012 began with high expectations for Occupy’s resurgence, the movement faced a far more challenging political and media environment than it had when it emerged in the fall of 2011. Then, Occupy events were not competing with national or state elections for media coverage. And for activists eager to engage in social change struggles, Occupy was the leading game in town. But once 2012 began, the media began focusing on the November presidential race. Activist energies also moved to state and local primary campaigns, as well as to the June 5 recall election of Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker. Whereas Occupy had generated 14 percent of the reporting from U.S. news organizations in mid-November 2011, by December such coverage had slid to 1 percent and was virtually nonexistent in March. More than ever, Occupy needed to recruit new activists rather than relying on mobilizing those already politically involved.16
To this end, such mainstream progressive groups as MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and labor unions helped recruit activists for training in direct action from April 9 to 15. Thousands of current and future Occupy activists were trained in preparation for a planned “99% Spring.” (Occupy had long identified with Egypt’s 2011 Tahrir Square Uprising and the “Arab Spring” that overthrew long-standing dictatorships.) The established progressive groups sought to redirect the Occupy movement toward addressing bank abuses, foreclosures, tax breaks for the wealthy, student loan surcharges, and other core economic justice issues. The plan was for Occupy’s resurgence to take the form of spring actions targeting corporate shareholders meetings, foreclosure actions, and legislation addressing income inequality. The training sessions and events would build up to nationwide protests on May 1 in which immigrant rights and labor activists would join Occupiers in a powerful display of the power of the 99 percent.
This was clearly a proactive strategy, and direct actions targeting all of the above issues occurred throughout the spring of 2012. But the same media that had covered every facet of Occupy the preceding fall were now preoccupied with election stories. While thousands turned out for Occupy’s May 1, 2012, protests in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle, the Occupy protests did not extend to smaller cities or rural areas, or outside traditional activist hotbeds. As a result, the May 1 Occupy protests got little coverage outside progressive media.
Ultimately, Occupy could not regain its past prominence in a presidential election year. As a non-electoral movement, Occupy was like a fish out of water in the national political scene of 2012. Its message did lead Democrats, from President Obama on down, to talk more about economic inequality and to strengthen opposition to tax breaks for the wealthy. But Occupy never aspired, as the Tea Party did for Republicans, to push the Democratic Party to the left by backing candidates in primaries or undertaking other electoral activism.
Measuring Occupy’s Success
Occupy continues primarily in the form of multiple groups independently challenging foreclosures, banking policies, Wall Street practices, and other issues affecting income inequality and economic fairness. Identifying these diverse actions as part of the Occupy movement put these protests in a broader and more understandable context. But a social movement is more than independent groups acting independently, and some question whether the goal of building such a movement was ever feasible or even necessary.
Occupy brought discussions of class, income inequality, and corporate greed back into the national debate. A study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting of leading newspapers and television news shows from the period of June–August 2011 (pre-Occupy) found the phrases “income inequality” and “corporate greed” barely mentioned; but uses of both phrases spiked dramatically after Occupy’s emergence. Similarly, Think Progress found that in the last week of July 2011, the leading cable news networks overwhelmingly focused on the national debt, while barely mentioning unemployment or the unemployed. Yet in mid-October 2011, Occupy’s emergence had made “jobs” and “Wall Street” far and away the top news media issues; the debt “crisis” barely registered. The Occupy movement clearly caused the media to shift coverage to job scarcity, Wall Street’s wealth, and the underlying economic and class issues that it had previously downplayed.17
The Pew Research Center released a poll on January 11, 2012, that appeared to confirm that Occupy-generated media coverage of income inequality had influenced public attitudes. The study found that “in just two years the perceptions of class conflict have increased significantly among members of both political parties as well as among self-described independents, conservatives, liberals and moderates. The result is that majorities of each political party and ideological point of view now agree that serious disputes exist between Americans on the top and bottom of the income ladder.” According to the study, 66 percent of the public believed that there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.18
Thanks to Occupy’s proactive agenda setting, millions of Americans had gained a better sense of the nation’s staggeringly unequal wealth and income distribution. And while the path toward reducing this disparity remains tortuous, Occupy activists have played an indispensable role in bringing public attention to this crisis. When Hurricane Sandy laid ruin to the Atlantic Coast and Northeast, Occupy activists created an “Occupy Sandy” campaign to mobilize