Occupied with Class: The Middle Class in the Occupy Movement
By any measure – unemployment, foreclosures, the rise in food stamp dependency, homelessness,etc – the US middle class has taken a beating over the last several years. And although I'm always hesitant to start an essay off by quoting Zizek, I haven't heard a better metaphor for both the current economic situation and the shock many Americans feel at what they see as the death of the “American Dream” than the iconic scene recounted by Zizek of a cartoon cat walking over a cliff who proceeds confidently for several paces into thin air before pausing and looking down. Seeing the gaping chasm beneath him, it is only then that he begins to fall.
After
three decades of neo-liberal attacks, much of what we consider middle
class life is really debt. That is, it is a fantasy, a placeholder
filling in for the stagnation of wages that was the '80s, '90s, and
'00s. Many other anarchist and Marxist authors have pointed this out
(David Graeber and David Harvey come to mind) but it's interesting
how the entire language of debt and crisis has shifted over the years
of the Great Recession. While today the media discusses it in terms
of austerity, sovereign debt and debt to GDP ratios, early on there
was a lot of talk of underwater mortgages and massive credit card
debt owed by individuals to financial institutions. Briefly this
popped into the media consciousness, as the sheer scale of resistance
forced the media to pay attention to the rapidly spreading
underground debt refusal. People walked away from houses, mailed the
keys back to the bank, and stopped paying on their credit cards. Just
as now the occupy movement routinely violates capitalist notions of
public and private property, then there was a similar rejection of
commonly held relationships and debt culpability. Whereas before
default and bankruptcy had been shameful in the popular consciousness
– with bankruptcy services ads run late at night or sandwiched
between afternoon talk shows - all of a sudden everyone was doing it.
In
2009 the New York Times reported that six percent of credit
card debt had been written off by banks. Faced with a population in
revolt, banks and collection agencies were offering large discounts
to customers willing to pay something – anything – of their
outstanding balance. Many of my friends and I participated in this
silent strike, netting massive discounts on the debts we had run up
over many cash-strapped years. For most of us, it wasn't just that
the debts had gotten too high to maintain, but also that credit card
companies had engaged in a series of interest rate increases, often
for petty reasons or no reason at all. Just like the balloon payments
and interest rate hikes on millions of mortgages, our credit cards
were designed to encourage us to miss payments, to accrue fees and,
when it came down to it, to keep us paying large payments for life on
even modest debts.
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| Phoenix PD mass arrest occupiers on the first night. |
In
my own case my interest rate jumped from around ten percent to 34.9%
for no reason at all. It was at that moment that I joined the
millions of Americans who had come to the obvious conclusion that,
even if we wanted to, we couldn't repay our debts. That decision, for
the fist time, put us and the banks on the same page. In an odd
congruence, we couldn't pay it off and, given the jacked up interest
rates, the banks obviously didn't want us to either. Interviewed in
that same Times article, Don Siler, chief marketing officer at
a major collection firm said, “You can’t squeeze blood out of a
turnip. The big settlements just aren’t there anymore.”
In
September of 2009, Ann Minch of Red Bluff, California posted a video
to Youtube announcing her debt strike as a call to action nationally.
"There comes a time when a person must be willing to sacrifice
in order to take a stand for what's right," she said. "Now,
this is one of those times, and if I'm successful this will be the
proverbial first shot fired in an American debtors' revolution
against the usury and plunder perpetrated by the banking elite, the
Federal Reserve, and the federal government." Many have
forgotten, but Bank of America interceded directly in her case,
fearing the implications of the debt revolt breaking out into the
open.
This
was a time when the first bailout was fresh in everyone's minds. In
2008, following the collapse of the banks and a popular revolt that
scuttled the first attempt at a bailout, the ruling class suspended
politics during the height of the presidential campaign in order to
flood the financial institutions with taxpayer money. John McCain and
Barack Obama put both their campaigns on hold and flew in a panic to
Washington, forcing a highly unpopular recapitalization bill through
Congress, complete with threats of martial law, collapse, and social
upheaval. It was at the peak of a historic election in which the
first black president stood on the verge of victory, riding on
promises – believed by many very fervently – of hope and change,
that the American ruling class revealed itself for all to see as a
monolith, united in its objectives, and willing to dispel the mirage
of partisanship in defense of its wealth and power. This lesson was
not lost on people, emerging later in the occupy movement's
denunciation of party politics.
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| The rally on the initial day of the ocupation. |
In
many ways, as I look back on those early years of the crisis, it
seems to me like those quiet, often individual and isolated acts,
perhaps mentioned briefly to friends and family, and negotiated
through a tactic of refusal, were the true precursors to the Occupy
movement. Millions participated, even as they held onto the fading
hope that Obama would deliver the change they thought he promised.
These people – middle class people primarily – had believed with
some justification that the system would respond to them. Indeed,
even though power clearly resides with a very small capitalist and
political elite, the middle class in America is the foundation of
almost all political and economic argumentation. All mainstream
political arguments must refer back to this mythical and
broadly-defined group at some point. The American ruling class
depends on this fecund soil of middle class identity and ideology to
reproduce the mythology and propaganda that maintains the system
overall, and of course the economy and the profits that go with it.
It is the middle class that votes and consumes.
But
for thirty years the middle class had been reduced to a photoshopped
image quite unlike its former robust self. Debt had replaced wage
growth. Home prices and credit card debt rather than real assets
made up its balance sheet. The suburbs, once a vast retreat to safety
and “normalcy” for the mostly white middle class, began to show
signs of collapse. Like mushrooms, one after another “for sale”
signs and foreclosure stickers spread through the car-friendly
neighborhoods. The official unemployment rate (always an undercount),
doubled in the eleven months between April 2008 and March of 2009.
Overnight the foundations of the middle class vanished for tens of
millions of people. What once seemed like a solid foundation was
revealed to have been rotting for some time, as Americans found
themselves crashing towards the basement in what had seemed like an
impossible reversal of fortune.
It
is in these conditions of 2008 and 2009, when the dream of Obama's
Hope and Change had ended and the crushing reality that politics
would not respond to the drowning-not-waving middle class, awash in a
sea of red, that we see the formation of what would become the Occupy
movement. While anarchists are right to point to predecessors in the
student occupations of 2009, and in the anti-globalization movement
before that, these are merely the origins of the form of the
movement, not the origins of the movement itself. In those movements
the general assemblies, spokescouncils, occupations, and
horizontalism have their origins, and the points of cross pollination
between the young occupy movement and those movements are obvious.
But the occupy movement itself had its birth in the crisis, in the
moment of the cartoon cat looking down after walking off the cliff.
It is a movement with a varied composition, which ranges from
homeless folks to students to anarchists to workers, but more than
anything else it is a movement of a middle class that is rapidly
re-proletarianizing, with a collapsing standard of living and
failing job prospects. In the process, it is finding itself in
unfamiliar territory surrounded by unfamiliar landmarks and
neighbors.
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| PCWC flyer |
Nevertheless,
vestiges remain of the many biases and privileges that came with
middle class status in the US, and these contradictions play out in
the occupy movement in ways that we can identify. In particular we
see these assumptions – primarily reflected in the bourgeois belief
that the system ought to respond to middle class people – play out
in arguments around nonviolence, the police, and questions of
perception and imagery. Right now, as we enter what may be the end of
the beginning of the occupy movement, we see the formerly middle
class working out its new identity in public for all to see,
contradictions and all. It appears schizophrenic, asserting at the
same time both what it sees as its fundamental right to protest, to
be heard, and to have its grievances ameliorated, and at the same
time finding itself open to new radical ideas and tactics. All this
while also facing down a system that clearly not only no longer
responds to them but actually sends against them the very same
jack-booted thugs that the middle class supported as they cast their
ballots for one law-and-order president after another in the last
three decades.
We
can lay out a few significant features of this middle class state of
mind that have come into play in the occupy movement, at least as I
encountered it in Phoenix (OPhx). First, as I said above, is a real
sense that the system ought to respond to their demands. That, when
it doesn't, the system is broken. Obviously, this simplistic view
ignores the process of exclusion and dislocation central to the
functioning of the system. Nevertheless, this is the view. Likewise,
there is a desire for respectability, for conformity to normal
bourgeois conventions, for example politeness, and a particular kind
of attire. This desire also often manifests as a rejection of
certain affiliations, and an insistence on maintaining or creating a
particular image. Another feature of this ideology is a desire for
order and an adoration of the police. Finally, one of the most
important elements of the middle class view is the tendency to treat
its view of the world and its experiences as normal, and to impose
hegemony on the movement based on this view.
These
are points of conflict in the movement not just because of the ideas
that form “middle class-ness”, but also because likewise
participating in the broader movement are poor people, homeless
people, and political militants -- primarily anarchists-- who have
quite different experiences with cops and politics, and who envision
different constituencies as the optimal target audience for occupy
actions and propaganda. Beyond this, “middle class-ness” in the
US is anchored to whiteness, and this has caused conflicts whenever
white middle class occupiers have attempted to treat their experience
as normative rather than specific and exclusionary, especially around
questions of policing, incarceration and justice. This makes the
occupy movement not only contested terrain, but one in which the
formerly middle class participants seek to impose their dominance
over the rest of it. Always lurking in the dark recesses of the
middle class consciousness is the idea that politics ought to be the
property of the responsible classes, and rubbing up against these
other populations has been the root of many of the conflicts in the
early days of this movement.
An occupier speaks with a member of a NSM front group.
All
in all, middle class occupiers are in conflict with themselves. They
operate generally within the safe confines of middle class ideology,
but their class position has collapsed. The question is how this
conflicted identity will play out. With no recovery in jobs or
incomes on the horizon, and therefore no way to reconstitute itself,
is the emergence of a working class or other non-middle class
identity inevitable? Will interaction with radicals, anarchists, poor
and working class people, as well as people of color (who may
challenge many of the basic values of whiteness that constitute
middle class-ness) lead to a radicalization, or a rush to defend the
formerly privileged class position? Obviously many downwardly mobile
occupiers long for a return to the good old days of the American
dream. Meanwhile, the system and all likely political candidates seem
wedded to austerity in one form or another. A political response that
would satisfy them all seems improbable.
Within
the occupy movement, at least its Phoenix derivation, the middle
class tendencies played out in a variety of interesting ways.
Nonviolence, for instance, was always deployed ideologically and
never defined. Most people who used the term “nonviolence” with
regard to the movement seemed to move interchangeably between
“nonviolence”, “nonviolent”, “peaceful”, “pacifist”
and various other terms, treating them as if they all referred to the
same thing. Some did this consciously (politically) and some seemed
to be operating out of the generally privileged and anti-historical
narratives of political movements that middle class people use to
mythologize struggle. Cartoon versions of Gandhi and King got trotted
out regularly, stripped of historical context or even political
content.
Given
its lack of definition, the demand for nonviolence was therefore
applied almost exclusively to militants, and never to police.
Militants are considered to be dangerous because they do not adhere
to the ideological and poorly-defined nonviolence of the middle class
occupiers. As a result of our refusal to toe the line, we are treated
as if violence is our preferred method of struggle, or even our
default setting. Our presence is perceived as dangerous. Indeed, the
participation of anarchists in OPhx was and continues to be a source
of much fear and debate, something police have exploited on several
occasions.
The
debate about the importance of nonviolence has a few main elements.
One is the false history of social change that is so important to the
middle class (people who value stability and predictability above all
else). The collapse of their class position has turned them into
disturbers of public order, and yet at the same time, they value
order and civility as hallmarks (or psychoses) of their suburban
lives and democracy. Tied into this is the belief that the system
would and should pay attention to them if only they could make their
case clearly and non-offensively. For this reason, violence is not
only perceived by the middle class as disruptive and ineffective, but
also as poor strategy. This is reflected in almost every discussion
about nonviolence, as the most common refrain “it looks bad on
tv”. We are not to appear like thugs, like criminals, like we are
out of control or not respectable; all loaded language that points to
middle class perceptions and fears.
At
one point during the first mass arrest at OPhx, occupiers (sitting on
the ground as riot cops encircled them) began to chant “We love
you!” and “We are peaceful!”, “We are nonviolent!” at the
cops, as if invoking an incantation of middle class desperation. In a
real way what they were saying was, we are not a threat and we are
playing by the rules. This is the old identity expressing itself. But
it's coming up against a hard new reality. Many of these people had
likely never been on the business end of a riot suit, much less been
arrested.
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| A tent on the first night of the occupation. |
Imagery
and perception played out along the terrain of class as well, with
many middle class occupiers exhibiting a near obsession with how
their fellow occupiers portrayed themselves. In the days before the
actual attempt to take over the park that was initially targeted for
occupation, a Reddit post circulated online which caught the
attention of the middle class elements within OPhx. The post
advocated that occupiers dress well, in suits and other office- or
church-appropriate attire. Supporters of this position claimed that
if we looked good, we would attract more people and that we would
also look sympathetic in the media. In this way, form was valued over
content, which probably isn't surprising for a class that has had the
foundations of its ideology yanked out from under it.
In
the same way that it was alleged that if we appeared respectable we
would be successful, the assumption was that if we looked bad (like
poor people or unemployed people or like people who had been
foreclosed on) then we would lose the support of the media and
therefore of the American people. Dirty clothes and torn t-shirts,
attire (including signs) that evoked anarchism, radicalism, or
homelessness, or a down-trodden or downward trajectory were
repeatedly singled out for being inappropriate.
At
the same time, middle class occupiers treated their assumptions about
who was being appealed to and who would be offended or attracted by
certain attire or messaging as a given, a natural fact beyond
dispute. In a real sense, they were talking about their former
selves, or perhaps their former employers. The idea that perhaps a
movement of the excluded and disempowered might not want primarily to
target middle class people made absolutely no sense to these middle
class occupiers, and their ideal presentation bore a striking
resemblance to a job interview.
In
a media world, driven by the consumption of the middle class, the
middle class naturally has its own image reflected back to them over
and over all day. Middle class-ness is treated as normal and correct
and even as large sections of the middle class found itself abruptly
and increasingly poor or working class, the ideology continued, like
sensations from a phantom limb. Likewise, the point that the media
itself was owned by the 1% and as such had no class interest in
portraying the movement positively (a fact that had been clearly
borne out up to that time by the coverage), was rejected wholesale by
middle class participants, despite the fact that they themselves
broadly felt disappointed and disillusioned by the media. For the
current and former middle class occupiers, the movement was as much
an appeal to conscience as anything else and the main vehicle for
that appeal, initially, was the media.
Beyond
this was the attempt by occupiers to impose on the movement a rigid,
hetero-sexual, anti-subcultural, and white suburban set of standards,
mimicking not so much the promise of the consensus-based general
assemblies that had excited them from far-off Zucotti Square, but
instead functioning more like the neighborhood or homeowners
associations that stifle all threats of diversity or difference in
the far-flung outer developments, now collapsing and emptying at an
astounding rate. This even though their class position had changed
drastically, even if they no longer lived in those suburbs or had
that good job and access to the easy credit that had made it all
possible. This raised the inevitable question of just what kind of
change these people wanted? Was it a break with the old order – the
failure of which had been the motivating factor for so many
participants in the first place – or was it to replicate or shore
up and reconstitute the old middle class life so many had believed
they enjoyed in the decades before the crisis? Was the occupy
movement to be the gravedigger or the defibrillator of the current
order? How deeply had middle class occupiers interrogated the
realities of middle class suburban life?
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| Anarchist interventions. |
Whatever
the answer to that question, OPhx inevitably came into conflict with
the police, who were another point of extremely heated debate. At the
beginning and to this day (though less so now than then), a large
majority of people have clung to the notion that cops were part of
the 99%.
In
order to discuss OPhx and the cops we have to temporarily accept the
idea of the 99%, which I think most anarchists believe is a clumsy
and inaccurate way to approach class composition of society. Many in
the occupy movement are in serious danger of reifying what is merely
a sometimes useful, albeit limited, tool, and this comes out nowhere
more obviously than how they talk about cops. In a way, however, it
makes sense that in the US, where almost everyone thinks of
themselves as middle class, when a class analysis finally broke
through to popular consciousness it would be ridiculously broad,
almost uselessly so. Either way, since “the 99%” was the
terminology being used, the discussion remained largely stuck within
it and vulnerable to its many limitations.
Early
on those political militants, working class people, and people of
color who had altogether different experiences and perspectives on
the police, came into direct conflict with those largely middle class
people who asserted that “cops are part of the 99%”. In an echo
of the conversation about image and perception, middle class
occupiers asserted that if we looked respectable, the cops would
treat us that way. Or if we were polite, the cops would have no
reason to attack us. Indeed, looking good, using good language, and
mouthing the movement's poorly-defined mantra of “nonviolence”
were used not only as some talisman of protection, but also
repeatedly deployed as criteria for singling out the dreaded “violent
provocateurs” who haunted the dreams of middle class participants,
agitators they believed were always ready to infiltrate and disrupt,
thus making the movement “look bad” and leading inevitably to
failure. The further one strayed from these core values, the more
likely it was that one would be attacked as an infiltrator. Thus,
these three criteria were used to reinforce middle class hegemony
over the movement.
People
who pointed out that the cops themselves were violent, and that our
relationship to the police was dictated not by our behavior,
appearance, or language but by our relationships to power and
capital, or that police were generally right wing reactionaries who
would dislike us no matter what we did or acted like, got attacked
themselves for being violent. That is, opponents or even mild critics
of the police were labeled violent for maligning the police or
remarking on police violence. This bizarre reaction was perhaps
natural given the fact that most middle class people's contact with
cops up until their participation in the occupy movement was limited
to getting tickets, asking for directions at public events, getting
directed in traffic, getting help after a crime, and generally being
made to feel safe and protected.
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| The composition of OPhx was complicated at times. |
Therefore,
police were not perceived at all as violent, but rather as
well-meaning members of the 99%, just doing their jobs, and only
prone to violence when provoked by people who deserved it. With seven
million people in prisons or jails or under state supervision at any
particular moment in the US, only the head in the sand NIMBYism of
the middle class could insist to a movement of the formerly middle
class that a small armed gang that puts so many 99%ers in jail every
year was part of the 99%. And, naturally their weak analysis of the
police led to consternation and surprise amongst middle class
occupiers each time the police broke with the presumed social
contract and resorted to violence and arrests against those perceived
socially as undeserving of such treatment.
So
the question remains. What will become of the formerly middle class
occupier? Many contradictions have yet to work themselves out. It
seems natural that a shift out of the comfy middle class wouldn't
come without its problems. Will the second phase of occupy, with the
election looming ever closer, display a more nuanced and advanced
understanding of American capitalism, politics, power, class and
resistance? One of the most inspiring things about the occupy
movement is its willingness to transgress conventional protest
tactics in surprising ways (even as it reinforces others), its
willingness to be disruptive and take over public and private space
and its (so far) rejection of the dominant politics. It shows a lot
of potential to being a creative, critical and confrontational
movement moving in a general trajectory that ought to make anarchists
happy. But will the former middle class occupiers, ejected so
summarily from their positions of privilege, find a new identity that
reflects their new conditions, or having wakened from the dream
briefly, will they instead seek to roll back over and recapture the
comforting fantasies of days gone by? Right now they are in a sense
doing anarchism without anarchism. But is that good enough?
