Reconfigurations of the 1 v 99

On October 28, a number of people including Natives and their allies put forward a Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples to the Occupy Oakland General Assembly. The Memorandum passed by a ninety-seven percent majority. On December 4, four Native women submitted a proposal to the Occupy Oakland General Assembly to change the name of “Occupy Oakland” to “Decolonize/Liberate Oakland.” Sixty-eight percent supported the proposal; thirty-two percent did not (by voting no or abstaining). Concurrently, the People of Color (POC) Caucus, and a subgroup of the caucus called Queer People of Color, has been discussing the possibilities of autonomously organizing their efforts apart from Occupy Oakland. These discussions have focused on intensifying concerns within OO about the continued privileging of the norms and voices of heterosexual men and whites (not necessary mutually exclusive groups) despite the self-presentations of Occupy movements as consensual and leaderless. They are discussions echoed throughout the country in multiple kinds of proposals, solidarity statements, caucus formations, and withdrawals.

Within the context of but autonomously organized from Occupy Portland is Unsettle Portland (http://unsettleportland.org). “Why “Unsettle”? All this land was settled 150 years ago: taken by force from the people that had generations of relationship with it. The law was used as a screen to mask this raw injustice. Every real estate deed in this country is clouded by blood and betrayal. Over the last few years, the banks of the 1% have instituted a new kind of “settlement”: using predatory lending, subprime derivatives, and corrupt politicians to steal trillions of dollars of assets from working people. And now those houses and buildings are standing vacant, decaying amid a sea of need, under cover of the “law”. We unsettle the banks to create the conditions for a new relation with the land, a foundation from which to decolonize all our lives.” Acknowledging the real historical connections between the fraudulent and violent history of Native land dispossession and “predatory lending, subprime derivatives, and corrupt politicians,” Unsettle Portland focuses its efforts on supporting “families resisting eviction, and those planning on re-inhabiting foreclosed homes and other vacant buildings.  We support community control of land and housing, and are an affiliate of Take Back The Land.”

In Albuquerque, a number of Native and allied protesters within Occupy have renamed their actions (Un)Occupy Albuquerque. As they explain: ““For many indigenous people, the term ‘Occupy’ is deeply problematic. For New Mexico’s indigenous people, ‘Occupy’ means five-hundred years of forced occupation of their lands, resources, cultures, power, and voices by the imperial powers of both Spain and the United States. A big chunk of the 99 percent has been served pretty well by that arrangement. A smaller chunk hasn’t.” That “smaller chunk” includes the 1.8% of the U.S. population who are Native, including American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians, and indigenous peoples of U.S territories in the Pacific, Caribbean, and Central America who continue to live at a 25% plus poverty rate compared to non-Natives and with all commensurate experiences of disproportionate numbers of land loss, unemployment, housing shortages, and ill health from malnutrition and environmental contamination.

Meanwhile, in Denver, the Anarchists’ collective has decided to no longer offer its legal support to OD:

“Our decision is based on festering frustrations with a small sector of OD who continue to marginalize, silence, and threaten our communities and ally communities. Despite the hard work of many involved in OD, its political platform continues to be framed by and for economically privileged, hyper-nationalist white heterosexual males. Experiences of race, gender, class, nationality, immigration status, and a multitude of other identities continue to be buried underneath the dominant “We are the 99%” narrative.”

The 99% Narrative

If you only listened to left-leaning commentators on network and cable news, the 99% sound like an amazingly populist, unified majority standing righteously against the corruption and greed of the 1%. The 99% are represented as embodying the best hope of leftist principles for social change that not merely “redistributes” existing wealth and privilege but overhauls the entire capitalist system.

Take Michael Moore’s recent blog entry: “We are not even 12 weeks old, yet Occupy Wall Street has grown so fast, so big, none of us can keep up with the hundreds of towns who have joined the movement, or the thousands of actions -- some of them just simple ones in neighborhoods, schools and organizations -- that have happened. The national conversation has been irreversibly changed. Now everyone is talking about how the 1% are getting away with all the money while the 99% struggle to make ends meet. People are no longer paralyzed by despair or apathy. Most know that now is the time to reclaim our country from the bankers, the lobbyists -- and their gofers: the members of the United States Congress and the 50 state legislatures….”

Even Cornell West, in an interview with Amy Goodman, has heralded Occupy as a democratic revolution fulfilling the vision of Martin Luther King: “Well, I think we’ve got to keep the momentum going, because it’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening. You’re talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what’s going on through a different set of lens. And then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be, because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution: a transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors. And that is a step-by-step process. It’s a democratic process. It’s a non-violent process. But it is a revolution, because these oligarchs have been transferring wealth from poor and working people at a very intense rate in the last 30 years and getting away with it, and then still smiling in our faces and telling us it’s our fault. That’s a lie. And this beautiful group is a testimony to that being a lie, when you get the makings of a U.S. autumn responding to the Arab Spring. And it’s growing and growing. I hope it spills over to San Francisco and Chicago and Miami and Phoenix, Arizona, with our brown brothers and sisters, hits our poor white brothers and sisters in Appalachia, so it begins to coalesce. And I tell you, it is—it’s sublime to see all the different colors, all the different genders, all the different sexual orientations and different cultures, all together here in Liberty Plaza. There’s no doubt about it.”

All together? Really?

The Challenge

Some within OO have accused Native/Indigenous, queer, women, and others of being divisive and trying to co-opt the movement for their own ends in their criticisms of heterosexual, white, male privileges in the GA process and leadership structure of OO.

If places like Occupy Oakland cannot figure out how to better reflect the concerns and experiences of Native/Indigenous, queer, women and other people (not that these are mutually exclusive), people and their communities will become autonomously organized. It is already happening through the renaming, reforming, and reshaping of caucuses and committees who are feeling marginalized and dismissed. It is already happening by groups moving meetings away from Oscar Grant Plaza. It is already happening as groups reimagine how to make other spaces where their perspectives and experiences are honored and respected. It is already happening.