Occupy's Identity Crisis

A note for the continuity of this blog: I started out in Food Group. I got frustrated, and burnt out, and pulled back. Only to get pulled into Camp Safety a week later, in an effort to spread my secret subversive agenda of love & compassion in the most direct way I could find.

Occupy Seattle is going through an identity crisis.

Occupy [insert American city] is likely also going through the exact same identity crisis. So here's the thing... Occupy Wall Street started out as a very specific and focused protest against corporate greed. "Yes! Yes, I can get behind that!" we all said. "I want to do it too!" we all said.

In Seattle, we jumped in feet first, with all of the passion and enthusiasm of a population truly fed up with The Way Things Are. But "End Corporate Greed" quickly morphed and grew into "FIX ALL OF THE THINGS RIGHT NOW" and "BUILD OUR NEW SOCIETY WITHIN THIS OCCUPATION / TENT CITY". Holy shit. That's a big shift.

All of a sudden, not only were we engaged in an ideological protest... but we turned ourselves into a homeless shelter. Accidentally, unintentionally, without really thinking through what it means to preform that sort of service work. Idealists among us (and really, who among Occupy organizers is not an idealist???) talked about visions of inclusiveness, and healing the harms in our society, and meeting each person where they're at to participate in a movement that belongs to all of us... As we moved into the camp at SCCC, we tried over and over again to pass community agreements through the General Assembly that would govern our community and inform acceptable conduct. But those community agreements were flouted and disregarded by activists and hangers-on alike ("oh, that rule applies to those assholes over there, not to me. I'm peaceful..."). Anyone and everyone wandered into our camp with all manner of addiction, dysfunction, and mental instability.

And it was a clusterfuck. It was the wild wild west, and Lord of the Flies. And one-by one, committed activists packed-up their tents in fear and frustration, and a desperate need to sleep in a safe and restful space.  They left behind empty spaces to be filled by those with addiction, dysfunction, and mental instability.  They left behind a crew of organizers and activists (many of whom are also homeless), who just couldn't quit. Who were so obsessively focused on trying to make the camp at SCCC work that many of us lost site of the Bigger Picture of what we are trying to accomplish. And also those of us who desperately tried to work with this camp, such as it was, and figure out how to keep moving towards that Positive Vision... And those of us who were willing to take the risk, to open ourselves up to the trauma of others, hoping to serve and help those with addiction, dysfunction, and mental instability.  Because we carry with us a vision of the new world we want to create, and that new word is based on inclusion and healing and community support... and creating that new world starts with healing the harms we see before us because we cannot leave that trauma behind us or sweep it under the rug. We must face it head-on and see its source within ourselves. 

But there are some very harsh realities of the Existing World that we failed to consider...

#1 - We're not just working with the homeless and unemployed population.  We are working with some of the most violent, most dysfunctional, most mentally unstable population in the city.  We are working with those people who get kicked out of other shelters and other social service agencies.  Some of those people get kicked-out of their programs as a direct consequence to a violent attack.  And their next step is move to the Occupy camp.

#2 - We are working with less resources than any of the social service agencies in the city.  Resources in the sense of stability, training, emotional and psychological boundaries, accountability, personal protection...

#3 - Social service agencies all have rules, boundaries, and social agreements that limit their populations to those who can step up to them.  This is not a tool that they use for oppression; it is a survival mechanism.  Any healthy community includes rules, boundaries, social agreements, and consequences for breaking those agreements.  We want to create a new paradigm of community governance that focuses on healing and inclusion... But in the meantime, we must protect ourselves from the overwhelming needs of a population that is drowning.  Just as a drowning person will flail in desperation and pull an unskilled lifeguard down into death with them, this population of homeless is pulling Occupy down with them in a desperate and very human attempt to grasp onto any support they can find.  OS is beginning to realize this and pull back from it.  And to many, it feels like tragic betrayal and abandonment.

#4 - Compassion includes boundaries and consequences.  It is not compassionate or healing to enable violent and addictive behavior. 

#5 - We cannot serve ALL THE NEEDS ALL AT ONCE.  As we continue to grow - continue working to build the new world we all envision - our work is to focus on affecting systemic change; holding politicians and leaders and corporate moguls accountable for the oppression of us all.  In the process we want to model our future community, but that is a delicate balance.  Occupy Seattle needs to preform the same self-care that all of our burnt-out organizers so desperately need.  To find our emotion/psychological center, to be grounded and focused and open to seeing the whole big-picture vision of what we are moving towards.  To understand the limits of our resources, and understand exactly what roll we intend to play. 

So here is the heart of our identity crisis:

Are we a social service agency, or are we a GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE AND REVOLUTION?  Okay, maybe I have a bias about which choice I think we need to make...  I think we already know the answer.  And we're not really making a choice to take one and reject the other.  I am making observation: a Global Movement For Systemic Change and Revolution has many faces.  It exists everywhere and nowhere.  It is an internet meme, and it is your neighborhood council, and it is your direct action network, and it is a general strike, and it is non-violent gorilla warfare.  It is an occupation of foreclosed homes, and it is protesters in the middle of your city every day reminding you and the 1% that THIS SHIT IS NOT RIGHT.

It may also be a community of activists sleeping in tents, some of whom don't have another home to go to.  It could also be a new tent city or a new ecovillage, built to model our Positive Vision; built to help serve those whom the system has abandoned.  And if some of us within the Occupy Movement choose to pursue that project, let us choose it consciously, with open eyes and open hearts and with the support and knowledge of the social service community that has come before us.

Let us make conscious choices about the work we take on and the paths we choose to walk.