The Activist's Handbook. Randy Shaw
capitalists.” As Mellinkoff saw it, Luxury Hotel Task Force members were “crusaders” and “eager soldiers” whom City Hall had allowed to prevail in “a war against corporations.” Clearly, NOMPC’s strategy had worked. The hotel fight had made the Tenderloin a neighborhood to be reckoned with.3
The decision to use this defensive battle to achieve a critical goal resulted entirely from continual discussions of strategy and tactics among the thirty to forty residents who regularly attended Luxury Hotel Task Force meetings. A good example of the group’s extensive tactical debates arose when the Hilton Hotel offered to provide lunch at a meeting to discuss its project. Gray Panther organizer Jim Shoch, whose tactical insights were critical to the Task Force’s success, made sure that every facet of the Hilton offer was analyzed for its implications. Some Task Force members felt that lunch should be refused so the Hilton couldn’t “buy us off.” The majority wanted to take advantage of a high-quality lunch, recognizing it as a vast improvement over their normal fare. Ultimately, the group went to the lunch but gave no quarter to the Hilton in the meeting that followed.
These time-consuming and often frustrating internal discussions enabled residents to understand that they did not have to accomplish the impossible (i.e., prevent approval of the towers) to score a victory. Without this understanding, the city’s ultimate approval of the hotels could have been psychologically and emotionally devastating. Instead, the Planning Commission’s approval did not diminish residents’ feelings that they had achieved a great triumph in their own lives and in the neighborhood’s history.
With city Officials having recognized the Tenderloin as a viable neighborhood, the Task Force turned to the second half of NOMPC’s agenda: establishing the Tenderloin’s right to residential rezoning. In 1981, San Francisco residents could initiate the rezoning process by circulating petitions in the neighborhood in question. NOMPC began its rezoning campaign immediately after the city’s approval of the luxury hotels. The rezoning proposal affected sixty-seven square blocks overall, with the strictest downzoning proposed for the thirty-five-square-block heart of the Tenderloin.
In this central area, the new zoning prohibited new tourist hotels, prevented commercial use above the second floor, and imposed eight- to thirteen-story height restrictions. The strategy succeeded largely because of its timing: on the heels of the Planning Commission’s approval of the hotel towers, even the pro-growth local political leadership felt the neighborhood should not be required to accept additional commercial high-rise development. But the city’s sense of obligation to residents of a low-income community might quickly evaporate in the face of a new high-rise development proposal; quick action was necessary to prevent new projects from emerging as threats.
The wisdom of the strategy was confirmed in 1983, prior to the city’s approval of the rezoning. A one-million-square-foot development that included hotels, restaurants, and shops was proposed for the heart of the Tenderloin. The project, “Union Square West,” effectively would have destroyed the affordable residential character of a major portion of the neighborhood. Clearly, Union Square West conflicted with the fundamental premise of the rezoning proposal; the project included three towers ranging between seventeen and thirty stories, a 450-room tourist hotel, and 370 condominium units. Would the pro-growth Planning Commission turn its back on the neighborhood and support the project? In the absence of the rezoning campaign, and despite the “obligation” incurred to the community after approval of the luxury hotels, San Francisco’s Planning Commission undoubtedly would have authorized the project. The tactical activism of NOMPC, however, preempted the mammoth proposal. When Union Square West went for approval on June 9, 1983, the ardently pro-growth Planning Commission chairman strongly chastised the developer. The rezoning process had gone too far for the city to change its mind. A project that would otherwise have been approved was soundly defeated.
The Tenderloin rezoning proposal was signed into law on March 28, 1985. Its passage culminated nearly five years of strategic planning that had involved hundreds of low-income people in ongoing tactical discussions. The rezoning enabled the Tenderloin to avoid the gentrification that occurred in virtually every other central-city neighborhood across the nation in the following three decades. Today, thirty-one blocks of the still-low-income neighborhood constitute the nationally recognized Uptown Tenderloin Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The North of Market Planning Coalition’s transformation of a major threat into a springboard for achieving longsought goals stands as a shining example of what can be accomplished through tactical activism.
THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT: WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT
Tactical activism is also vital in national campaigns. Activists seeking to implement a proactive agenda must overcome corporate and wealthy interests that not only spend billions to frame issues in their preferred terms but also have strong media allies to further their goals. That’s why Occupy Wall Street’s success in the fall of 2011 is so impressive. Occupy activists reframed a complex series of economic and social forces into a bumper sticker paradigm: the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. And after creating a new way for understanding inequality, Occupy trusted its instincts and avoided arcane policy debates and pressure to submit a list of “demands.” While some Occupy activists later became reactive, and the movement’s growth did not meet the expectations of its most enthusiastic backers, the Occupy movement reshaped the nation’s political dialogue in its first two months alone. Occupy also shows the grassroots energy that can be tapped when activists aspire to transcend conventional wisdom about what is politically possible.
Occupy Emerges
On July 13, 2011, the anti-capitalist Vancouver-based online publication Adbusters called for “20,000 people” to “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.” The protest was set to begin on September 17. While gathering 20,000 protesters in New York City is not difficult, the plan was for people to “occupy” a park for not just a night or a weekend, but for “a few months.” Adbusters had no idea how many would respond to its call. Some activists were mobilizing. A group known as US Day of Rage was organizing actions that day in New York City, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, and the protests were promoted on websites and tweets put out by the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous; and local activists associated with the newly formed New York General Assembly were committed to the plan. But labor unions, churches, and other large institutions whose outreach is often necessary to generate major turnouts were not involved. Nor was there an Official website, commonly used to mobilize mass events.4
On September 14, Nathan Schneider wrote on Adbusters’ website: “Not only will this weekend be a test of Americans’ readiness to resist, but of whether an idea lobbed into the internet by Adbusters, then grabbed by artists, students, Twitter hashtags, and a shadowy network of hackers (and hacker wannabes), can really turn into a ‘flood,’ a show of meaningful political force, a new way forward.”5 Many would have questioned whether the Adbusters network and its anarchist allies could create a viable “test of Americans’ readiness to resist,” given their lack of connection to mainstream progressive organizations.
Nevertheless, as many progressives despaired over President Obama’s failure and/or inability to implement his 2008 campaign vision, Adbusters and its initial allies saw an opportunity to tap grassroots discontent that nearly everyone else missed. Occupy’s call revived demands to address Wall Street abuses, rising income and economic inequality, and the inability of the U.S. political system to address either. Occupy also provided activists with an organizational vehicle to pursue this agenda. By offering both a vision and a vehicle, the Occupy movement became a case study in the power of proactive grassroots activism.
Redefining the National Agenda
Occupy’s very first protest showed that when activists take the initiative, it can cause strategically wrong responses on the part of government or other power centers that help expand the movement. The New York City Police Department made two early decisions that fueled Occupy’s growth.
First, the September 17 occupation was originally planned for 1 Chase Plaza, the site of the “Charging Bull” sculpture symbolizing