She hadn’t been a full-time Occupier, before the mayor’s eviction, but she’d been close. “Around five nights a week,” she told me. She has an apartment in Brooklyn; she has a job, working for a lawyer. She says that he’s been very supportive of her two months of Occupying. He advises her, however, not to put her name on record for this interview, so I’ll call her Anne.
Anne is in her early twenties, petite, nose-ringed, passionate about social change. We were in Bean and Bean, a coffeehouse on Broadway just off Wall St., with a little breathing space between us and the former physical center of the movement. It was Thursday, November 17, which was the two month anniversary of the Occupation, and two days after the protestors had been evicted from their makeshift tent city in Zuccotti Park. It was also what the Occupy movement had declared to be the International Day of Action, and she was somewhat encouraged because that morning the Occupiers had managed to organize themselves to the point of being able to delay the ringing of the opening bell.
She was in between direct actions: the next scheduled was the march from Foley Square, just a few blocks up Broadway from Zuccotti, right behind City Hall. She was sitting at one of the coffeehouse’s little tables; her friend was sleeping in one of the easy chairs. She looked at him fondly. “He lost his banjo and all his clothes that he owns,” she said: that’s what they thought at the time when I first spoke with her. Later, as was the case with many people, her friend was able to retrieve his tent and clothes from the department of sanitation. The banjo, however, was smashed to bits.
For the first few days, it seemed as though all the things taken by the police were gone for good. And many things were gone for good: the library, for instance, 5,000 books, neatly sorted into genres. The infrastructure that the occupiers had built could not survive the kind of cleanup the police had in mind. There was the gray water treatment system that the kitchen had set up, which involved charcoal chips and living plants; there was the bicycle powered generator; there was the kitchen itself, the art area, the media center. Much of this went into trash compacters, that night, she said: “They compacted it right there.” And what didn’t get destroyed was confiscated: everything that people weren’t able to take away immediately, and everything that belonged to people who were not on the spot.
Which included her. She hadn’t been in the park when the raid happened, but in a late-night strategy meeting “to plan for expansion.” The meeting was at Judson Memorial Church, a Baptist church on Washington Square, near NYU, less than a mile north of Zuccotti. “They’ve opened their doors to us,” she says. “I slept there last night…” The night of the raid, “everyone’s phones exploded with text messages at the same time,” she said, and the group that had been meeting in the church rushed back downtown. They stood outside Zuccotti, on Broadway, and watched as the police threw tents and belongings into the trash compactors, and threw out the people who had been there.
The occupiers had dispersed, that night—some up to the courthouse where Justice Lucy Billings was in the process of issuing an injunction against the removal of the camp, others scattered elsewhere. “There were little groups of fifty or a hundred running around the city trying to find each other,” Anne says. But, even with Twitter and texting, with no central place it was hard to regroup.
“They’re just wasters,” she says. “We really had a community there, you know? And we were taking care of each other. We were doing really important work. So many people have nowhere to live, now; nowhere to stay, and that’s not what we should have to be thinking about right now; we have work to do.”
She grew up in Oakland, California. “It wasn’t a very strong community,” she says. “This,”—meaning the Occupation—”reminded me of college. I would run around crowing that all over Liberty Plaza, and people would say, yeah, well, I didn’t go to college…” But that’s the context that she had for the kind of physically close, intense community that she’d been experiencing for the past two months.
“I work for a lawyer,” she explains. “He works ten blocks north. I’d walk to work; we’d have the spokes councils at lunch; then I’d have to do stuff for my boss, go to the courts for him; then I’d go back to 52 Broadway or 60 Wall for meetings.” These two addresses house some of the office space that the Occupiers had been using, to supplement the various offices set up around Zuccotti. “Then at night we’d go get a tall can, debrief…This is really what I want to be doing, sleeping in a park with my friends, organizing almost all the time. I’m so sad … I miss my tent so much. It was a real community. I just want people to know that we were taking care of each other and we were doing really important stuff… ”
Later on, she wrote to me about some of what that “taking care of each other” had looked like. “It’s true that there were people with problems at Zuccotti, but that always made sense to me, that those most adversely affected by this system would come there, since it is this system, and what it does to vulnerable people, that we are criticizing. Of course we all need to take care of ourselves, but we also took care of them. This includes drug users, mentally ill people, etc. We had social workers and mental health professionals on site that were down with the cause and helping those people.”
It’s not that she doesn’t know about the other serious problems that had cropped up in Zuccotti, either: the thefts, the rapes, the divisions between occupiers who brought their own sets of advantages and troubles to the park, the interpersonal conflicts. She knows these problems far better than anyone who has been following the news coming out of the park. All of the problems are true. But they’re not the only truth. What she saw was her place destroyed. “People were traumatized,” she said. “People were sick, they were hurt—it was like a tsunami hit. It was like a village after a natural disaster.
“I don’t want people to think that it was just that the NYPD came and cleaned up a mess. The NYPD came and messed with some of the best and brightest. From now on, I hope that when OWS asks, the rest of the world answers. This is what you’ve been waiting for. Maybe it’s not perfect, maybe it’ll take a while to grow into itself, but this is it. This is not a left-wing tea party—It’s not just, ‘I want my piece of the pie back.’ People are waking up, and they’re waking up in solidarity with the rest of the world.”
It seems as though one thing that people are waking up to is the radical importance of genuine community, and the need to fight and build and defend communities that can be sustained in the long run—whether that long run takes place in Zuccotti, on the sites of other Occupations, or simply in our own streets and homes. The point is not that the cops are all bad guys while the occupiers are good, or even that Occupation is itself the answer. Rather, the question that Anne’s experience raises is this: how did it get to the point that many people’s only experience of close-knit community is a protest encampment? Why does this seem to be one of the few places where the more privileged (Anne, for example) and the less privileged (those who have no Brooklyn apartment to go to, following the raid) actually come into contact with each other, live close by each other, have to deal with each other? If Occupy Wall Street leads us to ask, and answer, these kinds of questions about our own communities, maybe that will be the best kind of victory for the movement. Maybe these questions are the ideas that can’t be evicted.
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Was Jesus a Left/Liberal?
Also, though there is undoubtedly goodness in men, this is something that must be worked at, individually and collectively. We do not simply set society to rights by letting loose aimless sentiments to do good, but by ceaseless personal and social sacrifice, integrity, virtue and most importantly faith. Do-gooding sentimentalism is what saw the Australian Labour party vote to enshrine ‘homosexual marriage’ in its party platform this weekend, amongst the chattering of party members and pundits who could only argue for this outrage by vague appeals to the sentiments of equality and love.
I don’t know about BDouglass, but I feel very chastened by such a worthy rebuke. I mean the Church Fathers, though I am of course utterly unworthy of them, never used anything but the most saccharine of the language.
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‘I have not delayed to inform you, in order to show in few words how destitute Arianism is of a religious temper, and how its very business is to frame evasions…..AND do thou, beloved, consider whether it be not so. If, the devil having sown their hearts with this perverseness, they are so confident in the truth of their reasonings, why do they not first clear themselves of the charge of heresy which lies against them?’ -St. Athanasius. Yes, never a harsh word amongst the writings of the Fathers or Scripture.
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Seriously, do you have a point. Are you saying the OWS are not how me and BDouglass described them? Then say so. Or do you think that it is fine to ignore the basic pillars of Christian morality and a sensible community? Then say so and don’t try and lecture us on anger, while quietly peddling vice and corruption.
I read an extremely well written article and feel hopeful about our collective future… and then I read the comments section. Not sure who Wessexman and BDouglass are but you sound really angry, and not in a righteous way. The world will not imitate you, you’re unique. Stop getting so frustrated that everyone is dumb and just needs to be more like you.
Look beyond human weakness and discover the kernels of human goodness flourishing in everyone. You might find yourselves happier people and may even be more successful in preaching your understanding of the good news!
Well unions are acceptable in the sense they are better than not having such representation in corporate-capitalism, because they create at least a small bit of balance to the power of big business . In the modern West, I’m not sure who the common man is. I don’t think he is necessarily the OWS kind of person.
“Chesteron suggests real Trade Unions are attenuated to the Middle Ages Guilds BD.”
Well, we have not had a real Trade Union in this country in any of our lifetimes then. Given the defintion of Leo XIII’s workingman’s associations involving the building up of the whole man (which is impossible for our Materialist, largely Marxist infiltrated unions) and being against class warfare (which is also impossible in the us vs them structure of Unions, but is not true with the old guilds and coops), I really don’t see how a Catholic can support any modern Union I’ve ever seen as anything but a Satanic mockery of something good.
” But a General Strike can certainly get us there. ”
How? The Unions don’t want the common good, heck they don’t even know what a man is! How can a work stoppage get anything done if the Unions are behind it?
“You just need to have some confidence in the Common Man.”
Oh, I do, that’s why I don’t like unions or strikes. I like working to make Big Business, Big Government, and Big Labor redundant and show them for the un-needed terrorist organizations that they are. Don’t strike, just build your own system and drop out of the other. The only thing that keeps Holy Mother the State these days legitimate is that people pretend that it is, same for the other two scumbags.
Chesteron suggests real Trade Unions are attenuated to the Middle Ages Guilds BD. I agree that we are not headed in that direction. But a General Strike can certainly get us there. You just need to have some confidence in the Common Man.
The Australian Labour party is about to pass a party motion support ‘homosexual marriage’, or come only a few votes away from this. This is being pushed by the left of this party, the wing of the party which is almost identical to the kind of people who support the OWS off-shoots here. Now I know the US is slightly different; your leftists and liberals are slightly more sensible than ours, the MoveOn.Org folks are the standard left-of-centre folks in the West, outside the US. I do think that this tells us something about these folks though.
Good jobs for all will not be won by any General Strike nonsense. As one of the greatest French-American Distributists used to say, strikes don’t strike me. There is also no hope in the Unions as they are, all they are about is materialism and condemned class warfare.
The OWS people where I live are started and funded by the MoveOn.org Alinskyites in town. They are not the 99% in fact their ideas aren’t representative of any community except for the rich, spoiled liberals. The same group is fresh off of ensuring that they can murder the poor with local and state money at the health department while spreading lies about abortificants.
We talked about the vanishment of good jobs for the most part, what that does to our society and how we might revive the Solidarity Movement that can win a General Strike for good jobs for all. They seemed to be people who see the good and courage in others.
You know, like Catholics.
Did you ask them what their opinions of community were? Did you talk to them about respect for parents and elders? About sexual and personal morality and the right to life? About shared culture and values? In Australia and Britain the OWS copycats are not likely to be people who support the pro-community positions on such subjects. They are likely to be the kind of people who me and B Douglass have described.
Wessex- I spent some hours at the OWS little copycat group in Minneapolis. There I met Teamsters, Students, Veterans, Moms, Dads, Teachers, Lawyers, Soldiers, Nurses, Firefighters, a Sheet Metal worker, Carpenter, a family farmer or two, and a grocer. They, Along with the Usual Left Suspects treated me with great respect but then I wasn’t there to put them all down as rubbish.
Point of order, one of the comment threads asserts that the Bonus Army was “dispersed” by Marines under MacArthur. Not true. MacArthur was an army general and U. S. Army cavalry troops under him were used. The Marine Corps get too much unwarranted bad press for this Marine to let this howler go unchallenged. Look it up!
That’s what we’ve all been waiting for! Great posting!
[…] as he landed in New York City, calling for a stop to re-election politics and economic inequality. The Zuccotti Purge – “They’re just wasters,” she says. “We really had a community there, you know? And […]
I think it boils down to the fact that “community” as is understood by so many who have tried to organize the OWS movement is not what any Catholic would mean by it. They are shaped by Alinsky knowingly or not and that is one guy who wasn’t talking about a Catholic community. Read through Rules for Radicals if you don’t believe me. One paragraph defining community and it explicitly states that it is not a local collection of people who live and work and pray together. But, it could be geographic on the off chance that your cause it some political campaign based on an area.
With such a definition of community infesting the Left these days (and with so many who are so illiterate even in their own culture to not know where this comes from), I don’t see how we can expect OWS on the whole to lead to real community.
Community is built upon and for families. It is a local creature and worships God together, works together, raises families together. Which is why I cannot see any Distributist embracing as good OWS. It’s a crying shame. These people are anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-Church in their “democratic” consensus documents. Their money is coming from dirty, dirty sources. We should pray for them, try to convert them, be out there if we can to preach to them always…but I cannot see how any Catholic or Distributist can say that OWS is something that they should support.
mutt50; God decides how we should be treated. I mean authorities in the most basic, social sense sense, of parents, fathers, priests and elders. Community, as Robert Nisbet pointed out, is built around authority. Not the authority of the state, but the authority inherent in basic social institutions like the family, Church and local community. Those who have no respect at all for such authority are enemies of community. Honour Thy Mother and Thy Father!
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Of course promiscuity is important. A healthy community is not formed by libertines, people who care only for individual choice and autonomy. And yes there are differing roles for men and women, I have no problem saying such things, I would hope more traditional Christians were ready to be so forthright.
Well put, Wessexman! But the Gospel illustrates that we can’t expect the despairing moderns to be the first to return to their proper vocations. God washed the feet of His apostles, so they would know the nature of authority. Those given power must take up their cross first, to call back the foolish and confused generation.
Thank God for Christ, Our King.
@Wessexman,
And which authorities decide how we should be treated?
And Who said anything about promiscuity, and why is it an issue?
It always comes down to the “promiscuous libertines”, doesn’t it? And uppity women no doubt. When I look at OWS, I see a lot of hard working people,students and people who have had enough of the “Authorities”, who have no credibility left.
Is that the first rule of community? I would have thought it was treat others like they should be treated. So treat all the different, and varying, roles in a stable community as those roles deserves and require. So treat child as children should be treated, treat elders as they should be treated, treat parents as parents, fathers as fathers, mothers as mothers.
I bet if you asked the OWS people whether they wanted the necessary authority, duty and division of roles necessary for healthy community and they would say no. They would prefer ‘choice’, autonomy and libertine individuality. Community cannot be built on promiscuity, social egalitarianism and sentiment.
[…] The Zuccotti Purge She hadn’t been a full-time Occupier, before the mayor’s eviction, but she’d been close. “Around five nights a week,” she told me. She has an apartment in Brooklyn; she has a job, working for a lawyer. She says that he’s been very supportive of her two months of Occupying. He advises her, however, not to put her name on record for this interview, so I’ll call her Anne. […]
If Anne is an enemy of community we could use a billion more enemies just like her. She seems to have the first rule of community down pat: Treat others as you would be treated.
[…] from The Distributist Review: http://swanky-foot.flywheelsites.com/2011/11/the-zuccotti-purge/ GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]
[…] THE ZUCCOTTI PURGE: Susannah Black, The Distributist Review. It seems as though one thing that people are waking up to […]
[…] The Zuccotti Purge. […]
The police clearing out Zuccotti park in tyrannical fashion under the orders of the NY Supreme Court was the State telling us that the right to peacefully assemble will not be tolerated. The amount of crime and abuses at Zuccotti was very minimal and certainly over-hyped and even fabricated by the Neo-Con MSM. If you’ve followed the abuses by the militarized police on protesters you know that the right to civil disobedience is no longer tolerated, as well.
One problem is that people like Anne(obviously I don’t know her and am generalising about left-liberal sorts who mostly attracted to the OWS type protests) tend to be enemies of community. I mean this in the sense they are enemies of the sort of authority and shared values and narratives that make community possible. Instead they prefer a radical personal autonomy and anarchic diversity that destroy the soil from where true community can grow.