I am writing on July 4, 2021. History rages along toward the 10th Anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which culminated on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, in response to the financial crisis that culminated in 2008.

The similarities observed between the years leading up to Occupy Wall Street and the present moment in this reflection are admittedly broad. Noting the similarities is not meant to imply that the return of the Occupy Movement to the streets in large numbers, as a lasting political force, is or is not inevitable or likely on its 10th Anniversary, or to imply any other predictions. My observations hardly amount to a thesis, except that they are worth reflecting upon in the coming months, and that the political and economic conditions from which Occupy arose are largely the same or worse 10 years later. The tinder from which that fire erupted is still burning, which is worth considering.

Occupy was sometimes criticized for not focusing enough on a specific issue or demand, for not organizing for the same reasons each time, for lacking consistency and clarity in messaging and leadership, and for failing to achieve concrete political changes or fulfill a singular, material political goal. Most of these charges are better understood as stereotypes than criticisms of the Occupy Movement, often stated without evidence and assumed to be negative. However, I will accept a premise of many critics of Occupy — that Occupy was sprawling, responding to many different crises simultaneously and somewhat vaguely, rather than to one crisis in particular — as a starting point from which the following observations seem relevant, for the sake of modesty.

Before laying out the similarities between where we are now and where we were in 2011, if we accept the premise that Occupy or my observations of the historical moment in which it arose are broad, focused on many issues all at once and no singular issue consistently, it is worth noting that the short-lived anti-war movement in response to the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the last major American protest movement before Occupy Wall Street. The anti-war movement of the early 2000s had more participants than Occupy. Its participants were generally older than those of Occupy. Its demands and messaging were clearer, more specific, more focused on a singular issue than Occupy’s. And its organizing tactics were more consistent than can be said of the Occupy Movement.

Yet, the political success of the anti-war movement of the early 2000s, the number of its aims realized as a result of its actions, and its stamina and influence over time, now seem clear: precisely none. The protests in America against invading Iraq in the early 2000s carried no leverage and had no material successes to point to, in the short term or the long term, despite millions participating.  

The Occupy Movement, on the other hand, transformed American politics. Its influence is still felt today. Occupy was the dawn of a new era of grassroots protest movement, may or may not be over yet, resulted in concrete changes and contributions to protest movements that followed it, and was constantly accused of having no focus, no message, no leadership, no goals, no consistent way of achieving them. The protests against the Iraq War had all of this and more, everything Occupy lacked, including more participants, and accomplished nothing.

(The material changes that can be traced to the Occupy Movement will be explored in writings in HTR throughout the summer, but for now, one simple example to cite is that it’s hard to imagine the rise in popularity of Bernie Sanders, campaigning with the phrases “99%” and “1%” and a proposal to break up the banks, without the Occupy Movement coming before him. Contrast this with the anti-war movement of the early 2000s, which spawned no anti-war Presidential candidates with a major following.)

Since Occupy began 10 years ago, many of the same problems, caused by the same leadership, have continued and worsened. The similarities between now and then are worth observing as an introduction to further explorations of Occupy history as we approach its 10th Anniversary:

The number of unemployed was high in the months leading up to Occupy and is high as we approach its 10th Anniversary.[1]

As in the years before Occupy’s inception, the economy has just crashed and the country is still clawing its way out of a recession.[2] While unemployment numbers have been going down for a few months, as of May 2021, “Aggregate employment remained 7.3 million jobs below its pre-recession level,” according to a June 15 report by the Congressional Research Service.[3]

As a result of the housing collapse, homelessness was an increasingly prevalent topic in the years leading up to Occupy, and homeless people were integral to the Occupy Movement, especially in New York City, although they were (ironically) largely unrecognized, and sometimes resented for their participation, by non-homeless participants in the movement. Homelessness is also increasingly prevalent in the years leading up to Occupy’s 10th Anniversary. The increase of homelessness in America started well before, and was worsened by, the Covid Recession.[4]

The U.S. military remains bloated and expanding leading up to the 10th Anniversary. Biden’s first National Defense Authorization Act provides 754 billion dollars in so-called “defense” spending, a 2% from Trump’s final fiscal year.[5] Funding to nuclear weapons has increased under Biden, as it has under every American president from George W. Bush to the present.[6]

Concern and awareness about climate change (largely due to debate over the Keystone XL Pipeline, as well as hope that environmental issues were more likely to be addressed with a Democratic President), became slightly more mainstream in the years leading up to Occupy.[7]

As we approach the 10th Anniversary of Occupy, climate change is of greater concern now than ever.[8] Another similarity to the pre-Occupy years is that we have just elected a President who seems more likely to (positively) address climate change than the one before him.

In addition to climate change, young people were experiencing another crucial and growing threat to their futures in the years leading up to and culminating in the Occupy Movement: the ballooning student-debt crisis, which arguably spawned a new underclass of educated, overqualified, stagnant, or downwardly mobile students and graduates that became the primary organizing engine of Occupy. The student debt crisis is still with us, and awareness and debate about it are more mainstream now than in 2011 despite the lack of political change.[9]

The student debt crisis is likely an even more heated issue now than when Obama took Office, partly because there has been greater popular pressure on Biden to relieve, forgive, or cancel student debt going into Office than there was on Obama, pressure to which Biden relented in his 2020 campaign.

Additionally, Biden campaigned on promises to take steps to relieve student debt, which, as of this writing, seemingly will not happen any time soon. Obama did not emphasize the issue in his campaigns or make any significant attempts to address it while in Office.[10]

Ayelet Sheffey sums up the current phase of the student-debt crisis during Biden’s first year, months before Occupy’s 10th Anniversary, in Business Insider, “While it’s admittedly early, Biden hasn’t fulfilled any of those promises yet. The most that can be said is that he is starting to consider working on them, and it’s going to take a while to see progress.”[11]

To many everyday left-leaning Americans, the difference between the Obama and Biden administrations is that the left flank of Obama’s base was prone to feeling exploited, evaded, and skillfully rejected, while under Biden, they are beginning to feel ungracefully betrayed, sloppily disappointed.

In 2011, the wreckage of an overtly imperialist, undemocratically elected Republican administration that turbocharged one disaster after another for eight years was still fresh. Many were still waiting in 2011, with excitement or skepticism, to find out for whom the Obama administration was really working.

In the aftershock of Trump, Biden has entered a political climate not so different from the one into which Obama entered in the aftershock of George W. Bush, the major differences being that Trump is a little less intelligent and a little less articulate than George W. Bush, and Biden is a lot less intelligent and a lot less articulate than Obama. 

In short, Obama never promised student debt relief. Biden did, and most likely will not deliver on that promise before the 10th Anniversary of the Occupy Movement.

Under Obama, those who crashed the economy were bailed out, and the modest relief proposed by Congress for everyday victims of the crash among the 99% was struck down in the Senate.[12]

In Occupy terms, the “1%” has been bailed out again in the wake of the Covid Recession. Covid stimulus passed under Biden on the heels of dragged out squabbles in a gridlock-circus over proposals to give small change to the 99%, a show that ended with Arizona Democrat Kiersten Sinema quite literally doing a little dance for Mitch McConnell while casting her vote to kill the $15 an hour minimum wage provision.[13]

More important to this reflection, the relief is temporary and does not seem likely to be extended or followed by a new substantial relief package.

In other words: Pandemic unemployment relief is set to run out just weeks before the 10th Anniversary of the Occupy Movement.

Originally published on The Hard Times Review

[1] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Unemployment in July 2011,” 8/10/2011

[2] Howard Schneider, “Is It Over Yet?: Still No Recession End Date as U.S. Economy Hums Along,” Reuters, 5/4/2021

[3] Gene Falk (coordinator), “Unemployment Rates During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Congressional Research Service, 6/15/2021 (page 2) (link: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R46554.pdf)  

[4] Glenn Thrush, “Homelessness in U.S. Rose for 4th Straight Year, Report Says,” The New York Times,3/18/2021

[5] Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2022, Office of Management and Budget (page 39) (link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/budget_fy22.pdf)

[6] Lara Seligman, Bryan Bender, Connor O’Brien, “Biden Goes ‘Full Steam Ahead’ On Trump’s Nuclear Expansion Despite Campaign Rhetoric,” Politico, 6/2/2021

[7] Kate Sheppard, “What’s All the Fuss About the Keystone XL Pipeline?” Mother Jones, 8/24/2011

[8] Vitoria Bekiempis, “Earth is Trapping ‘Unprecedented Amount of Heat,’ Nasa Says,” The Guardian, 6/17/2021

[9] Adam S. Minsky, “Pressure Builds on Biden to Extend Student Loan Pause And Cancel Student Debt – Here’s Where Things Stand,” Forbes, 6/24/2021

[10] Elaine Pofeldt, “Obama’s Education Focus Overlooks Next Financial Contagion,” CNBC, 1/29/2014

[11] Ayelet Sheffey, “Biden Campaigned on Cancelling and Reforming Student-Debt. Here’s Where Those Promises Stand,” Business Insider, 6/27/2021

[12] David Goldman, “Senate Vote Fails, Obama Gets $350B,” CNN Money, 1/15/2009

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNo_U7PTGzk&ab_channel=BloombergQuicktake%3ANow

(One of the most fondly remembered aspects of the Occupy Movement is the People’s Library in Zuccotti Park, created and protected around the clock by Occupy Wall Street protesters living in the park and outside supporters of the movement who donated books.

Among the books in the People’s Library was the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, written and collected by protesters and supporters of Occupy who passed through Zuccotti.

Aeliana Boyer, a People’s Librarian, lived in Zuccotti Park and worked for the People’s Library from late September until the NYPD violently evicted the protestors in November, 2011. Police destroyed the People’s Library, wrecking and trashing all the books they could, along with everything else in the park.

As the destruction began, Boyer courageously grabbed as many of the most important texts as she could and rushed them to the apartment of a New Yorker who supported the Occupy Movement and lived nearby. In two frantic trips from the park to the friend’s apartment as the eviction unfolded, she saved the historic Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, which was thousands of pages long and compiled in three-ring binders, along with dozens of religious texts[i]

Boyer was 27 years old during Occupy.  

In late July, 2021, Boyer tells her Occupy history from the first time she heard about the movement and participated, to the history of the People’s Library, to the eviction of Occupy from Zuccotti Park, and where the movement has gone since then. This is Part One of her Occupy story.)

What was your life like around the time Occupy Wall Street started?

I had just spent the summer in England. When I got back, I was staying at my friends’ house and they were all really involved in Occupy Wall Street. They kept telling me to go down there, but I was like, “I need to find a new job and a new apartment. I don’t really have time for that.”

Then I went one day and it was so beautiful and emotional, so I started going down there.

What made you decide to be involved?

Well, I’m a writer and I was really drawn to The People’s Library there. I like the idea of free knowledge, free book share, and the fact that it was this place of ongoing conversation, where people were just mixing in a way that I’d never seen before.

I grew up in the Bay Area, and it reminded me a lot of things I’d seen in the Bay Area but a lot bigger, where people gathered in parks to discuss ideas and treated that as something to be taken seriously.

Describe how you first got involved with the People’s Library, and what the People’s Library was and how it worked for readers who are unfamiliar with it.

Well, there was this man named Eric, who had been really instrumental in building the People’s Library. He and I became friends and then he asked me to hang out one night, because I’d just been going down there in the daytime up to that point, and he kind of knew my situation, knew that I was just staying at a friend’s house.

And he basically was like, “Look, I haven’t been home in, like, weeks. My wife is pissed. Why don’t you hang out here overnight? You know? You have nothing to do.”

And I was kind of like, “Oh my god. I can’t believe I’m gonna do this, but, like, fine. I’ll do it for one night.”

Then I never left.

How come you never left?

It was just interesting. There was so much going on. There were all these people, famous intellectuals, coming through every day and talking about things, and I knew that stuff like that doesn’t last long, so I just figured, like, “I might as well put my real life on pause and see what happens with this.”

And how did the People’s Library work? What was your job as a librarian there?

People were just bringing in tons of books every day. Like, people were coming from upstate with literally truckloads of books. It was crazy. There were so many books, and we were cataloguing them and trying to make them as accessible as possible, trying to catalogue them in a way that made them easy for people to look through.

So, we had a fiction section, science section, religion section, stuff like that. We also got computers donated, so we were building a little server so people could look up what we had.

We were in conversation with the People’s Library happening in Egypt in the Egyptian Spring, and they would send us letters about what was happening there, and we’d exchange solidarity letters and read them in the park.

As time went on, other Occupations started building libraries too, so we were having conversations with different People’s Libraries around the country – you know – and we were all autonomous, you could do what you wanted, but we were in conversation and telling people how we were handling it on our end.

Then, a few weeks into it, we just had so many books, like, so many.

And then Patti Smith came by one morning with Klaus Biesenbach, who ran MOMA PS1.

They came by and talked to us, then they bought us a tent for the books, and then they took us to some really, really fabulous parties.

(laughs)

They wanted to learn about it. You know?

And that was kind of the People’s Library at its best: when the Patti Smith military tent came in and we had, like, a giant library, because then it was enclosed and we didn’t have to worry about the books in the rain anymore.

Before that, some days we’d have to tarp everything down and there was just a lot of labor, moving things around every day. At night, we’d have to put it all away.

So, I helped with stuff like that, making sure everything was kept nice and clean, and there was a lot of talking to people, because so many people came by every day and the People’s Library was a really easy entry point to Occupy, because books aren’t threatening. People who probably might’ve otherwise been scared of Occupy Wall Street found the library as a way into it that was nonthreatening.

It was both the People’s Library at one end of the park, and at the opposite end of the park, the Tree of Life was also like that for people new to the park. Have you talked to people about the Tree of Life?

Describe the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life was my other favorite part of Zuccotti Park. They’ve since torn it down and replaced it with this, like, disgusting steel monument, which I think is so indicative of everything wrong with New York City, but the Tree of Life was the one tree that survived 9/11 in that area.

It was just this little tree. When 9/11 happened, there were all these photos taken of how this one little tree survived the blast and everything else was demolished. So, that little tree was kind of the spiritual center of Zuccotti. There was daily meditation there and all these religious groups were doing stuff there, Rabbis, yogis, all kinds of religious figures, over by the little Tree of Life every day, and that was also a less politicized entry point to the Park for people, that and the People’s Library.

[i] SeeThe Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology here: https://peopleslibrary.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ows-poetry-anthology5.pdf