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Negotiating Power and Difference within the 99%

JEFFREY S. JURIS*, MICHELLE RONAYNE** 1 ,

FIRUZEH SHOKOOH-VALLE*** 2

& ROBERT WENGRONOWITZ† 3

*Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA, **Nova Psychiatric,

Quincy, MA, USA, ***Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA,

†Department of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

ABSTRACT The Occupy movements have given voice to the widespread frustration that so few (the 1%) seem to hold all the power. The vast majority (the 99%) lacks an (equal) say in the social, economic, financial, political and ecological processes that affect our lives. Inspired by the 2011 global wave of protests including the Arab Spring, the Greek resistance, the acampadas in Spain, the Wisconsin uprising and the Israeli summer, and starting with the takeover of New York City’s Zuccotti Park on 17 September 2011, the Occupy movements have sought to overturn these power imbalances by using the occupation of public spaces, mass assemblies, tent cities and direct action to shine a light on the effects of growing inequality and the disproportionate influence of corporate power over our politics and economy. However, while the occupations rally against external systems of power, a widespread logic of aggregation and majoritarian populism have complicated efforts to recognize and address internal differences and inequalities. This article examines power and exclusion in the Occupy movements through an analysis of race within Occupy Boston, which began in late September 2011 and has continued in a decentralized fashion since the camp’s mid-December eviction. As scholar activists from diverse backgrounds, we employ observant participation, interviews and activist reflections to explore how occupiers in Boston have represented, negotiated and addressed internal power relations, suggesting that a shift toward networking logics, practices and forms offers a promising avenue for engaging differences as well as racial, class and other modes of exclusion.

KEY WORDS: Occupy, political protest, power, race, exclusion, social movements

Introduction

The facilitator, a white male, began the activity by asking for 20 diverse volunteers to line

up side by side at the front of the crowd assembled at the Occupy Boston encampment at

Dewey Square. He then issued a series of declarations: ‘If your ancestors lost land by the

conquest of the U.S. government, step back; Step forward if your ancestors gained assets

through the slave trade; Step back if your ancestors were brought here in chains to be slaves;

Step back if you or your ancestors arrived as immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Africa,

or the Caribbean’. These and other statements produced a visible line of stratification, with

mostly white participants at the front and people of color toward the back.

1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/12/3 – 40434-7 q 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.704358

Correspondence Address: Jeffrey S. Juris, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 500 Holmes Hall,

Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Email: [email protected]

Social Movement Studies, Vol. 11, Nos. 3–4, 434–440, August–November 2012

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2012.704358

More than 250 occupiers took part in this much anticipated anti-oppression workshop on

16 October 2011 in response to the widely perceived lack of diversity and experiences of

exclusion at Occupy Boston. That the General Assembly had been cancelled for the first time

ever to create a space for the workshop underscored the importance of the evening, although

as organizers later noted, the attendees included many more women and people of color than

usual, suggesting a self-selecting audience. Nonetheless, this was one of the first times

Occupy Boston had addressed, in a collective and public way, the significant differences and

power relations that despite the populist rhetoric continue to permeate the 99%.

This essay reflects on the dynamics of power and exclusion within Occupy Boston and the

Occupy movements more generally. We focus on race and class, as did the anti-oppression

workshop described above, but it is important to note that gender, sexuality, race and class

all intersect to create overlapping systems of oppression. Within Occupy Boston, activists

are constantly negotiating and contesting their places, identities, relationships and positions

within complex webs of power. Indeed, a clear-cut understanding of power fueled the

Occupy movements, as the discourse of the 99% versus the 1% united a vast group of people

who felt they were being increasingly excluded from the fruits of society. This dualistic

framework was a potent way to facilitate collective mobilization and political action, but the

majoritarian populism reflected in the 99% frame, itself shaped by a powerful logic of

aggregation in the Occupy movements (see below), has complicated efforts to recognize

and address internal differences, inequalities and exclusions.

Through our own engaged ‘observant participation’ (Vargas, 2006) and semi-structured

interviews with a dozen activists, we explore how occupiers have represented, negotiated

and addressed internal power relations within Occupy Boston, suggesting that a shift toward

networking logics, practices and forms offers a strategically promising avenue for engaging

social differences as well as racial, class and other modes of exclusion. As scholar activists

from diverse disciplines and backgrounds—two sociologists, an anthropologist and a

psychologist; one of us is a white woman, another a woman from Puerto Rico and two of us

are white men (we are all US citizens, identify as heterosexuals and come from middle-class

upbringings)—our goal is to contribute to discussions of difference and power in the

Occupy movements through a particular focus on the dynamics of race and class, as well as

alternative forms of organization within Occupy Boston. Our analysis points to the need for

a deeper engagement with internal differences and power relations among occupiers, as well

as a self-reflexive, adaptable approach toward negotiating and bridging such differences. 4

The Rise of Occupy and the Pitfalls of Majoritarianism

The Occupy movements have given voice to the widespread frustration that so few (the 1%)

seem to hold all the power. The vast majority (the 99%) lacks an (equal) say in the social,

economic, financial, political and ecological processes that affect (and threaten) our lives.

Inspired by the 2011 global wave of protests including the Arab Spring, the Greek resistance,

the acampadas in Spain, the Wisconsin uprising and the Israeli summer, and starting with the

takeover of New York City’s Zuccotti Park on 17 September 2011, the Occupy movements

have sought to overturn these power imbalances by using the physical occupation of public

spaces, mass assemblies, tent cities and direct action to shine a light on the effects of growing

inequality and the disproportionate influence of corporate power over our politics and

economy, while simultaneously building a movement of equals where each voice is as

important as every other.

Negotiating Power and Difference 435

Unlike the previous era of global justice activism, however, which involved a ‘movement

of movements’ and was characterized by a powerful networking ethic of coordination

across diversity and difference (Juris, 2008a), the Occupy movements with their

majoritarian populist impulse and organizational logic of massing large numbers of

individuals in concrete physical spaces (Juris, 2012) have had difficulty recognizing and

addressing internal specificity and difference. The movements for global justice also had to

confront a relative lack of racial and class diversity (Starr, 2004; Juris, 2008b), but their

networking logic allowed them to grasp internal differentiation. As the occupations

expanded beyond Zuccotti Park to cities across the USA, moreover, the use of social media

together with extensive mass media coverage, after the first week at least, allowed occupiers

to reach far beyond typical activist circles. This greatly expanded their base of organizing

but also meant that many occupiers lacked an awareness of internal differences, privilege

and intersecting racial, class, gender and other forms of domination typical of the wider

society. Occupiers with greater experience, including many activists of color, have

struggled to build awareness around these issues and to create structures and processes more

conducive to the participation of marginalized groups.

The critique of the Occupy movement’s homogenizing discourse and practice expressed,

for example, in the successful effort by a group of women of color to remove ‘post-racial’

language from Occupy Wall Street’s Declaration of Occupation, 5

also extended to the

concept of the 99% itself, which was widely recognized as a powerful semantic coup that

frames the Occupy movement as a majoritarian challenge to the disproportionate political

and economic influence of an elite few, but which also made internal differentiation more

difficult to address. As Becky, 6

a white anti-racist organizer in Occupy Boston, pointed out,

the 99% frame ‘is ingenious and amazing in its simplicity, what I think is a problem is that it

was taken on as “we are already the 99%.” For us to win against the 1% we need the 99%,

not 23% of the 99%’.

Although individuals from marginalized groups did have a presence at Occupy Boston,

including activists of color and members of the ‘houseless’ community (this semantic shift

was used pervasively at the Dewey Square encampment), people of color and especially

those from poor and working-class communities, were significantly underrepresented,

particularly given the demographics of Boston, where non-Hispanic whites comprise a

minority of the population. Beyond the challenge of recognizing internal differences and

power relations, powerful structural barriers are also at work. Given the time and resources

needed to participate in mass movements, not to mention the access to relevant information,

it is no surprise that, with a few exceptions, contemporary movements in the USA—

particularly those characterized by more informal, fast paced and individualized modes of

participation—tend to be predominantly, if not entirely, composed of privileged actors

with the economic, social and cultural capital necessary to effectively operate within them.

In this sense, there has been an historical divide between the more ‘personalized’ politics of

white and middle-class activists and the ‘communitarian’ politics of people of color

communities that have tended to organize within more formalized grassroots organizations

(Lichterman, 1996; cf. Juris, 2008b).

Recognizing the need to both engage the unequal racial and class dynamics within

Occupy Boston and negotiate differing organizational logics and forms, community

organizers and occupiers began holding ‘movement-building’ meetings early on to attempt

to bridge the divide between grassroots organizations and the comparatively white, middle-

class occupiers. Organizers grappled with the challenge of how to work with a movement

436 J.S. Juris et al.

defined by an individualized mode of participation and voiced the importance of addressing

the experiences of their working class, people of color constituencies: ‘the most deeply

affected 15%’. 7

Racial and Class Tensions within Occupy Boston

The movement-building meetings were initiated as a way to address a divide that arose early

on between Occupy Boston and a network of community-based organizations. The first

night of the occupation, Friday, 30 September 2011, coincided with a mass action against

the Bank of America regional headquarters organized by a local anti-foreclosure group—

City Life/Vida Urbana—in conjunction with the national Right to the City Network. That

protest brought together thousands of mostly low-income people of color from across the

country to engage in the largest anti-foreclosure action of its kind in Boston and perhaps

anywhere in the USA. At the first assembly to plan Occupy Boston, which took place on the

Boston Common just three days prior, organizers of the Right to the City event spoke out in

an attempt to delay the occupation, pointing to the race and class differences between the

two protest groups and the need to support low-income communities of color. However,

those early assemblies were chaotic, involving several hundred people, including many

first-time activists, coming together in the dark, and most people did not fully grasp the

issue, particularly those who missed the first assembly. Moreover, the lack of an agreement

upon a set of basic principles, structures and protocols and the highly individualized nature

of participation in the assembly made it difficult to recognize the collective needs and

interests of the different groups that Occupy Boston might engage, the potential tensions

between them and the alternative strategies, tactics and forms of organization through

which diverse constituencies mobilize.

Another incident of racial and class tension took place during the early days of Occupy

Boston when a young white man claimed to have developed a list of common demands,

sparking controversy when he failed to recognize that his list reflected his particular social

location. As Jennifer, a middle-aged white member of the Occupy Boston facilitation

working group, recalled:

This is a privileged white male [who] stands up, and I think with the best of intentions,

reads what his list of demands are, and he says he thinks he’s come up with a good list

because he’s been inclusive and has talked to a lot of people, but nowhere in his list of

demands was anything about our criminal justice system . . . or the fact that our

constitution actually has written into it racism and is anti-women, like women don’t

get the vote and blacks are 3/5 of a person. When people started questioning what’s in

his list he got angry.

The point Jennifer was making was less about the specific content of the man’s list than a

critique of his non-self-reflexive, universalizing assumptions and behavior. For Jennifer, it

is important to step outside of one’s own privileged perspective, recognize internal

differences and make sure that marginalized voices are included.

Additional tensions more directly reflected structural contradictions and organizational

differences between different communities. For example, Daniela, a Latina activist,

explained that many of Occupy Boston’s structures and practices, including the time

consuming assembly-based consensus processes, do not easily translate in the context of

Negotiating Power and Difference 437

communities that use different forms of organizing, mobilizing and decision-making: ‘If

the point was to involve community members and immigrants, it was an inaccessible

language, it wasn’t connecting with the people’. Moreover, ‘consensus is very democratic,

but it takes a lot of time, and time is one thing our folks don’t have’.

For her part, Deborah, a young African American organizer, explained that the cultural

tension between the individualism of mainstream occupiers and the communalism that,

in her view, characterizes the grassroots organizations and people of color communities

where she lives and works, contributed to her decision to back away from the movement.

One way this tension played out was in her frustration with ‘autonomous actions’, which she

felt undermined the collective will and put people from marginalized groups at risk. She

believes in a diversity of tactics, but ‘there is also an importance to collective agreements,

where you put what the community has decided as a whole above your own personal needs

and desires’. She went on to implicitly criticize the highly personalized politics and logic of

aggregation within Occupy Boston, lamenting that participation and proposal-making

within the assemblies were driven by individuals, which discouraged more interactive and

collective forms of decision-making where members of marginalized communities might

feel more comfortable.

Recognizing Difference and Challenging Exclusion

Occupiers have developed multiple strategies for recognizing differences within the 99%,

negotiating privilege and challenging unequal relations of power. For example, multi-racial

groups of organizers and activists, including many with previous anti-oppression training,

have formed working groups and organized trainings and forums to raise awareness about

and begin to address privilege and oppression within the movement. At Occupy Boston, the

group that held the anti-oppression workshop depicted in ‘Introduction’ section went on to

create the anti-oppression working group which has continued to meet regularly since, as

has the Decolonize to Liberate group that formed to bring the perspective of indigenous

struggles against colonialism to Occupy Boston.

Meanwhile, members of traditionally marginalized groups have created their own spaces

to discuss the needs and experiences of their members, while challenging exclusions of

race, gender, class and sexuality and bringing a greater awareness of privilege and

oppression to the struggle. At Occupy Boston, organizers and activists have created the

People of Color Caucus, the Women’s Caucus and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender

and Queer direct action working group. Outside Occupy Boston, organizers inspired by

Occupy have started initiatives such as Occupy the Hood and Ocupemos el Barrio to

mobilize working-class people of color constituencies using methodologies and engaging

issues perceived as more relevant to their communities. Finally, the movement-building

meetings that have attempted to bridge the divide between occupiers and community-based

groups have provided another forum for organizers and activists to engage differences and

relations of power within Occupy Boston. In this way, experienced organizers and activists

of color have created multiple autonomous spaces within and around Occupy Boston that

have allowed for diverse constituencies with distinct organizing traditions, practices and

forms to coexist and work together within a more or less coordinated movement field.

A hybrid model of organization has thus begun to emerge combining a logic of networking

with a logic of aggregation.

438 J.S. Juris et al.

Finally, innovations have also been introduced with respect to the assembly and

decision-making processes to make them more accessible for working-class people and

communities of color. These include a reduction in the number of General Assemblies per

week from seven to four and finally to three, the introduction of a progressive stack where

members of marginalized groups and those who have spoken less frequently are given

preference on the list of people waiting to speak and the use of small group discussions to

make deliberations surrounding proposals more inclusive, interactive and participatory.

Nonetheless, critical challenges remain, such as ensuring that power, privilege and

oppression are addressed outside particular caucuses and working groups, negotiating

differences within marginalized groups and anti-oppression spaces, raising awareness

and facilitating discussions without reproducing ideological rigidities and contending

with the realities of lingering tensions and structural constraints to building diversity and

cross-class, multi-racial alliances.

This essay has explored some of the differences and exclusions along axes of race and

class that were reproduced within Occupy Boston, as well as various efforts to address

them. Not only is it crucial to address power differentials within the 99% but also efforts to

engage marginalized groups, including working-class communities and people of color,

can be enhanced by further incorporating networking logics, practices and forms that make

it possible to recognize internal power relations, facilitate autonomous organization and

grassroots participation and promote coordination across diversity and difference.

For example, the rise of ‘spokescouncils’ in many occupations, which provide smaller,

more collective and interactive spaces for delegates of various working and affinity groups

to communicate and coordinate, represents a promising shift in this direction. Although

some occupiers, including participants in Occupy Boston, have viewed spokescouncils as a

challenge to the authority of the General Assembly, signaling a tension between a logic of

networking and a logic of aggregation, the two can and have effectively worked together:

spokescouncils allowing for different groups and constituencies to organize autonomously

in more intimate settings and then to coordinate their activities and actions, the General

Assembly continuing to provide a mechanism for more individualized expression and

decision-making around issues that affect the wider community.

Notes

1. Email: [email protected]

2. Email: [email protected]

3. Email: [email protected]

4. A special note of thanks to Bryan MacCormack, a student occupier, for participating in our research team by

conducting an interview and sharing his insights regarding Occupy Boston.

5. The text that was removed included the following: ‘formerly (emphasis ours) divided by the color of our skin,

gender, sexual orientation, religion, or lack thereof, political party and cultural background (Ashraf, 2011)’.