Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] How to rebrand Occupy
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View original article here:
http://socialistworker.org/2012/05/02/how-to-rebrand-occupy
Comment: Arun Gupta
======== HOW TO REBRAND OCCUPY ===============================================
May 2, 2012
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"The 99% Movement" has something for everyone, even the left, but is it
Occupy? Journalist Arun Gupta, a founder of the /Indypendent/ [1] newspaper
and of the /Occupy Wall Street Journal/, reports on the discussion and debate
among activists about the "99% Spring." A version of this article was
originally published by Salon.com [2].
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BY ALL measures, the Occupy movement is a powerful brand. It has thousands of
spinoffs, such as occupy our homes, occupy money, occupy the hood, occupy
gender equality and occupy the food system. It has powerful name recognition,
snagging "word of the year" [3] honors in 2011. And now ardent supporters are
manning the ramparts to defend its integrity.
Adbusters, the culture-jamming magazine that helped spark Occupy Wall Street,
is accusing unions and liberal groups clustered under the banner of the 99%
Spring of tarnishing Occupy's sterling name. Launched in February by groups
like Greenpeace, the Service Employees International Union, MoveOn.org and
Rebuild the Dream, the 99% Spring announced it would train 100,000 people in
April [4] for "sustained nonviolent direct action" against targets like
Verizon, Bank of America and Wal-Mart [5].
These groups, bellowed Adbusters in an online missive "Battle for the Soul of
Occupy," [6] are "the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the
possibility of revolution for decades." Adbusters fingered MoveOn as one of
the primary saboteurs of Occupy, and linked to an article in Counterpunch [7]
that claims the 99% Spring "is primarily about co-option and division, about
sucking a large cross-section of Occupy into Obama's reelection campaign,
watering down its radical politics, and using these mass trainings as a
groundwork to put forward 100,000 'good protesters' to overshadow the 'bad
protesters.'"
It's a fiery broadside, but there's little evidence to back it up. I queried
occupiers from San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Little Rock and New York
who joined 99% Spring trainings, and not one witnessed election-year
politicking. Others stressed the coalition includes organizations that would
bolt if it was promoting the Democrats. One core organizer of the 99% Spring
who preferred to remain anonymous blew his stack when I asked if there
weren't legitimate reasons for occupiers to be suspicious of the effort:
>Why don't people look at the fact that MoveOn, this huge organization that
>has set much of the tone for the progressive movement for the last 10 years,
>is now trying to engage in a radical culture shift by moving its members
>from clicktivism to getting them to put their bodies on the line in
>nonviolent street protests and militant eviction defenses in their
>neighborhoods. Maybe Occupy is worried about its own viability.
>
Some observers go further, claiming that Occupy is the one co-opting MoveOn.
Josh Harkinson in /Mother Jones/ writes [8]: "It seems that America's
best-known progressive fundraising organization is now taking its cues from
Occupy Wall Street."
Nathan Schneider, writing in Waging Nonviolence [9], takes a more nuanced
approach by concluding that while the 99% Spring is indeed co-optation, there
is also an opening. Because the thousands who participated in the 99% Spring
are a juicy target, he argues that Occupy should be asking how to "turn these
people's attention to structures of oppression, rather than to stump speeches
and delegates?" Schneider gives voice to the many Occupy activists who want
to engage with broader forces. As one activist observes [10], "The worst
thing we could do right now is make Occupy Wall Street into a small 'radicals
only' space."
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BUT THE real story is how the main groups behind the 99% Spring--such as
MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream--have created a meta-brand known as the "99%
Movement" that encompasses a product line that includes 99% Power [11], 99%
Candidates [12], 99% Uniting [13], a 99% Voter Pledge [14], and events like
"All in for the 99%" [15] and "99% Spring Bank Protests." [16] (Rebuild the
Dream, MoveOn and SEIU are sponsors of nearly every formation.)
Broadening the coalition to include radical left organizations that reject
electoral politics is a sophisticated way to enhance the overall brand. Such
groups can feel confident they are maintaining their independence from
elections by participating in the 99% Spring, but they are still building the
99% brand, which will then be used in forms like the 99% voter pledge and 99%
candidates to boost the Democratic Party's fortunes come fall.
Additionally, MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream are not being entirely forthright
about how they are using the 99% Movement to rebrand existing projects. The
99% Candidates are repackaged "American Dream candidates" [17] that were
rolled out last October. The voter pledge "has been based in part of the
Contract for the American Dream [18]," according to Justin Ruben, the
38-year-old executive director of MoveOn. Same with the 99% Spring. Ruben
said some actions are new, but he acknowledged to Salon it's mostly old wine
in a new bottle. "There is a bunch of groups that have been actively involved
in putting the 99% Spring together, and these are the actions that
they...have been planning since the summer before Occupy."
The question of engagement for the Occupy movement involves both form and
content. Given the form of the 99% Movement, it is wishful thinking to
believe that Occupy can co-opt MoveOn. Sayrah Namaste, an activist with
(Un)Occupy Albuquerque, says, "There is a real concern about what MoveOn is
doing and if it is co-optation...People from (Un)Occupy see MoveOn as heavily
part of Democratic Party politics and question what their motives are and how
they operate."
Much of the suspicion toward MoveOn stems from its role in the Iraq antiwar
movement. Some antiwar leaders say their relationship with MoveOn was marked
by opportunism and undemocratic dealings. Storied 1960s activist Tom Hayden
wrote in an email, "I think they dramatically expanded the [antiwar]
base...But it's fair to say they were driven by Democratic strategy and the
desire to jump on issues which would bring in more members." Leslie Cagan,
cofounder and former national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice,
says, "MoveOn is very top down...As best I can tell, they have never
developed a democratic structure that allows the members to vote on who the
leadership will be or how decisions are made, let alone have serious input
into the positions that MoveOn Takes."
What this top-down structure means, says Bill Dobbs, a member of the Occupy
Wall Street press team and longtime antiwar activist, is that "Groups like
MoveOn can walk into any Occupy movement and engage in the discussions, but
we can't participate in their strategy discussions." I pressed Ruben on the
issue, specifically the charge that MoveOn undermined the opportunity to end
the Iraq War in 2007 when the Democrats took over both houses of Congress,
and he would only concede, "What happened in 2007 was complex and the
narrative around MoveOn's role is not accurate."
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HOW THE 99% Movement came into being is a prime case of top-down
decision-making. While the 99% Movement by all evidence is an exercise in
branding, Ruben denies this. "It's not a rebranding strategy. It's an effort
to give this movement a name," he claimed. Though Ruben does refer to it as a
brand: "No one organization controls the 99% brand."
Ruben says the story of the 99% Movement begins in 2011: "When we partnered
with Rebuild the Dream early last year, it was based on the idea that there
were the conditions for a new movement to come forward in American to take on
economic justice and inequality." Ruben says they eventually decided that
"[t]he American Dream movement was our best name for this phenomenon that
nobody had named. Some people were calling it the Main Street movement. We
said we have to give this thing a name, otherwise it doesn't exist in the
eyes of people watching. We were seeing it was a real thing."
Evidently, this decision was prior to the "Take Back the American Dream" [19]
conference held in Washington, D.C., from October 3-5. The conference website
states "a new movement is energized! Thousands came to Washington...to help
plan the takeoff of the American Dream movement, building on the momentum of
the Wisconsin workers' rights protests and the Occupy Wall Street actions to
build an independent movement for change."
Ruben continues, "And then Occupy Wall Street happened and crystallized a lot
of the frustration. It engaged millions more people and captured the
imagination of the whole world. It had this 99% frame that did something that
nobody else had managed to do yet, which was to tell this whole story through
characters and unify these twin problems of political and economic
inequality. It was just an amazingly powerful frame. We said, okay, this is
the name for it because people were walking around with signs saying 'I am
the 99%.'"
Ruben says the goal was to name a movement that included Occupy, but was
bigger than it. "The 99% Movement is the broad wave of folks who've been
coming together over the last 14 or 15 months in increasing numbers to fight
for economic justice and against inequality...Within that Occupy is one
powerful, amazing and important part of that movement, but it is not limited
to Occupy."
Despite Ruben's denial of the 99% Movement being a rebranding of the American
Dream movement, he says, "We didn't have the right name for it." This
statement reveals that the renaming is a branding strategy decided from on
high. Another inside source with the 99% Spring who wished to remain
anonymous says, "My hunch is they are branding the Rebuild the Dream
candidates as 99% candidates and are leveraging the language used by Occupy."
While MoveOn and other organizations praise Occupy Wall Street for shifting
the political terrain to the left, they are forging ahead with creating a
movement that presents itself as Occupy's successor. Writing in the /Nation/
[20], Ilyse Hogue, who serves on the board of Rebuild the Dream and is the
former director of political advocacy and communications for MoveOn,
describes occupying public space as nothing more than a "tactic" that is now
"dead." Hogue wants to "make way for the new," namely the 99% Spring and the
99% brand.
Also writing in the /Nation/ around the same time [21], Van Jones, the former
Obama administration official who cofounded the Democratic Party-allied
Rebuild the Dream, stated, "This spring 2012 will mark the long-awaited
re-emergence of the 99 percent movement."
I told Ruben that I have visited nearly 40 occupations in 25 states in the
last six months and have talked to hundreds of occupiers, but no one ever
told me, "I am part of the 99% Movement." Ruben responded, "Occupy is the
most visible at the ground-level piece of it, but I'm going to push back at
you saying [the 99% Movement] doesn't exist. I talk to those folks all the
time. They are in our membership. Those are the people who organized
nonviolence training, a thousand of them."
Yet this appears to be a ploy to confuse cause and effect. Ruben says MoveOn
has 7 million members, with a "couple million" having joined since 2011. If
MoveOn is relentlessly flogging the meme it helped create--"the 99%
Movement"--then is it really a bottom-up movement like Ruben claims?
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WITH THE 99% Spring kicking into full gear, with the help of MoveOn's PR
firm, BerlinRosen, the 99% Movement brand is suddenly appearing everywhere.
MoveOn is promoting weeks of protests at upcoming corporate shareholder
meetings. Two of the biggest protests so far were at Wells Fargo in San
Francisco on April 24 and General Electric in Detroit on April 25. A search
on Google News for the two protests turned up dozens of references to "the 99
percent movement" in outlets including CNBC, Reuters, the Chicago Tribune and
The Detroit News, overshadowing mentions of the Occupy movement. (One report
labeled the 99% movement [22] the "Ghost of Occupy Wall Street.")
For anyone involved in Occupy Wall Street, the menu of upcoming corporate
targets is an appetizing line-up, such as Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Peabody
Coal, Amazon, WellPoint and Occidental Petroleum. Noticeably absent are
politicians, however, which is probably intentional. The 99% Movement employs
the ideas and language of Occupy Wall Street towards ends diametrically
opposed to it: support for Democratic Party candidates, up to and including
President Obama. Protesting corporations but not the politicians who work
hand in hand with them is a crafty way to redirect Occupy's energy away from
the Democratic Party, which is as much an object of Occupy Wall Street's ire
as the Republicans.
Ruben does not deny this is the strategy. "We are the 800-pound gorilla, and
we work very actively on elections, including supporting Barack Obama and
other Democratic candidates. If you think that is a terrible idea and you're
worried about energy from the movement that you love going into elections,
then MoveOn is an obvious target."
Ruben claims the 99% Voter Pledge [23] also drew inspiration from Occupy Wall
Street, but the pledge is so watered down from the original OWS Declaration
[24]--"Make the wealthiest 1 percent pay their fair share"; "Create good jobs
now"; "Stop cuts to vital services"; and "Represent people, not
corporations"--that Obama could endorse them, which again is probably the
point.
Van Jones has been leading this push to rebrand candidates. Days after Occupy
Wall Street was evicted from Zuccotti Park last November, he claimed the next
phase of the movement [25] was "recruiting 2,000 candidates to run for office
now under this 99% banner." (More recently, Jones said we should pitch talk
of class war overboard [26] because it is dragging down the movement. He
claims, "The real enemy is not the 1 percent," while skirting the reality
that it was class politics from below which filled the sails of the Occupy
Wall Street movement, propelling it onto the national stage.)
This unified brand strategy of the 99% Movement is evident in a media
advisory dated April 24-25 from BerlinRosen, a "communications consultancy"
based in New York. Announcing a "New Wave of 99% Activism To Hold Big
Corporations Accountable Over CEO Pay, Tax Avoidance, Jobs," the advisory
explains, "protestors in the 99% will risk arrest to disrupt Fortune 100
corporations' shareholder meetings nationwide in the coming weeks." The
release noted that "the protests are being organized by The 99% Spring," and
stated, "For more information, visit www.the99power.org [27] and
www.99uniting.org [28]."
According to its website, BerlinRosen's clients [29] include SEIU and
MoveOn.org Political Action [30], which calls itself "one of the largest
Political Action Committees in the country."
MoveOn.Org Civic Action is the force behind the 99% Spring, however. As a
501(c)(4), Civic Action is supposed to avoid activity involving the
endorsement of political candidates. Ruben took pains to make this
distinction, saying, "Our work through the 99% Spring specifically is done
through our C4, and we do almost all of our political work through our PAC,
which is MoveOn.org Political Action." This crossover may cause it problems
as a number of people say MoveOn is distinguishing between its two arms to
get people on board with the 99% Spring who are otherwise wary of electoral
politics. And to top it off, BerlinRosen's client roster includes Brookfield
Properties--the "owner" of Zuccotti Park [31].
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THIS DOUBLE-dealing reeks of inside-the-Beltway power brokers who play both
sides of the aisle, which stoked the popular outrage that fed the Occupy Wall
Street movement.
Four years ago, Barack Obama vowed to repeal the Bush tax cuts, make union
organizing easier and put America back to work. Instead, his administration
has attacked teachers and autoworkers unions, the real unemployment rate is
close to 15 percent [32], social services are being throttled nationwide as
non-financial corporations hoard $1.24 trillion in cash, one in 69 homes was
hit with a foreclosure filing in 2011 [33], and not one Wall Street or bank
executive has been jailed for perpetrating the biggest economic crime in
history.
The demise of the Iraq antiwar movement is a warning for the Occupy movement.
Obama the candidate wrapped himself in the antiwar mantle. By 2011, Obama the
president was waging war on six countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq,
Libya, Somalia and Yemen), asserting the right to assassinate U.S. citizens
without due process, and continuing policies of indefinite detention and
warrantless surveillance. Many liberals now celebrate Obama [34] as "one of
the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades," while liberal
groups like MoveOn have fallen silent on the issue of illegal wars and war
crimes.
Glenn Greenwald observes that this hypocrisy [35] turns "right-wing
radicalism into robust bipartisan consensus," making it ever more difficult
to build a principled antiwar movement. For Occupy, the danger is of being
sucked into the Democratic Party as its purpose becomes supporting a party
that is in the pocket of Wall Street, instead of ending the tyranny of Wall
Street.
Referring to Mitt Romney as "Mr. 1%," Ruben says, of the 2012 presidential
contest, "There are real elections happening where people are choosing
between candidates who want to cut taxes for billionaires and candidates who
want billionaires to pay their fair share. And that's a real choice."
Many occupiers beg to differ. Sure, plenty say they will hold their nose and
vote for Obama, but few think it will make a real difference. Perhaps more
significant economists beg to differ. None--left, right or center--think
making billionaires "pay their fair share" by passing Obama's "Buffet Rule"
will do anything meaningful to reduce inequality. But calling Romney Mr. 1%
is a subtle way to imply that Obama represents the 99%. Bill Dobbs says, "If
Obama is fighting for the 99%, I'm Greta Garbo. He's running around the
country selling the presidency to raise $700 million."
The Occupy movement has created an opening in which millions of people in
unions and organizations like MoveOn are receptive to the idea that only
radical changes can solve America's social and economic crisis. But Dobbs
cautions:
>We need a resistance movement, not more Democratic Party-aligned advocacy.
>This kind of relationship needs to be approached with healthy skepticism.
>There are benefits, but also perils because...social movements often wind up
>in the Democratic Party junkyard. That's where contemporary feminist
>organizing has ended up. That's where civil rights struggles have ended up.
>
For the Occupy movement, the question is where it ends up this November.
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[1] http://www.indypendent.org/
[2] http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/borrowing_the_occupy_brand/singleton/
[3] http://www.americandialect.org/occupy-is-the-2011-word-of-the-year
[4] http://the99spring.com/about/
[5] http://actions.the99spring.com/actions
[6] http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/jump.html
[7] http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/05/counter-insurgency-as-insurgency/
[8] http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/99-spring-moveon-occupy-wall-street
[9] http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/04/ask-not-whos-co-opting-you-ask-whom-you-can-co-opt/
[10] http://www.beyondthechoir.org/diary/137/a-practical-guide-to-cooption
[11] http://www.the99power.org/
[12] http://www.rebuildthedream.com/blog/2012/02/28/electing-99-candidates/
[13] http://99uniting.org/about/
[14] http://www.99percentvoter.org/page/s/99percentvoter
[15] http://www.allinforthe99percent.com/
[16] http://pol.moveon.org/team/members/campaigns.html
[17] http://www.rebuildthedream.com/blog/2011/10/08/whats-next-we-have-a-plan/
[18] http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/
[19] http://www.ourfuture.org/conference/2011/virtual
[20] http://www.thenation.com/article/166826/occupy-dead-long-live-occupy
[21] http://www.thenation.com/article/167172/99-percent-100-percent-case-deep-patriotism
[22] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/24/us-ge-meeting-idUSBRE83N10S20120424
[23] http://www.99percentvoter.org/page/s/99percentvoter
[24] http://www.nycga.net/resources/declaration/
[25] http://www.cnncom/video/#/video/us/2011/11/16/nr-intv-van-jones-ows.cnn
[26] http://www.thenation.com/article/167172/99-percent-100-percent-case-deep-patriotism
[27] http://www.the99power.org
[28] http://www.99uniting.org/
[29] http://www.berlinrosen.com/clients/advocacy
[30] http://www.moveon.org/about.html
[31] http://wwwdnainfo.com/20111130/murray-hill-gramercy/residents-partner-with-brookfield-buy-stuy-townpeter-cooper-village
[32] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
[33] http://www.realtytrac.com/content/foreclosure-market-report/2011-year-end-foreclosure-market-report-6984
[34] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/president-obama-warrior-in-chief.html
[35] http://www.salon.com/2012/04/29/celebrating_our_warrior_president/
