The Activist's Handbook. Randy Shaw
occupation then shifted to Zuccotti Park, which was private property. This meant that police could not force protesters to leave absent the property owner’s request. Zuccotti was a far better site for pitching tents, setting up tables, holding meetings, and attracting people to Occupy Wall Street. Not recognizing that the city had given a great gift to Occupiers by shifting the protest to a private site, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg told a September 17 press conference that “people have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we’ll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it.”6
The September 17 protests included about one thousand people, only 5 percent of the number that organizers projected. It received little media attention. Follow-up protests were also ignored. Keith Olbermann observed on his MSNBC show Countdown on September 21, 2011, that “after five straight days of sit-ins, marches, and shouting, and some arrests, actual North American newspaper coverage of this—even by those who have thought it farce or failure—has been limited to one blurb in a free newspaper in Manhattan and a column in the Toronto Star.” He noted that, in contrast, “a tea party protest in front of Wall Street about [Federal Reserve chief] Ben Bernanke putting stimulus funds into it, it’s the lead story on every network newscast.”7
The lack of media coverage obscured the fact that activists were still learning about the occupation. As more visited Zuccotti Park and came away impressed, Occupy’s message expanded. Many got their first opportunity to join an Occupy protest on Saturday, October 1. This rainy day became a significant turning point for the Occupy movement. Once again, a proactive move by Occupy triggered a counterproductive police response that helped build the campaign. In this case, when Occupy protesters began walking across the Brooklyn Bridge—a very common New York City activist tactic—more than seven hundred were arrested. The protesters were apprehended despite having engaged in no violence, vandalism, or civil disobedience. Nor were they trying to block traffic. In fact, Occupy had tried to avoid conflicts with police.
The huge number of arrests made headlines. It also put the Occupy movement on the national map. Media coverage of the mass arrests necessarily reported Occupy’s arguments about inequality, boosting plans already in the works to expand local Occupy actions nationwide. Occupy now attracted support from labor unions and other more mainstream progressive groups. The symbolism of the arrests could not have been more effective: the same police force that protected Wall Street was used to arrest Occupy protesters, with many assuming that the NYPD had acted at the behest of the 1 percent. To top it off, the media sided with the marchers’ version of events. As the New York Times put it, “Many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.”8
The Brooklyn Bridge arrests turned Occupy into a national story. Reporters unable pre-Occupy to convince editors to cover rising economic inequality were now given space to address the issue. Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney then added fuel to the growing media fire by criticizing the Occupy protests as “class warfare”; this comment effectively turned income inequality into a partisan issue. When thousands took to the streets in New York City to express solidarity with Occupy, President Obama said he “understood” the protesters’ concern: “It expresses the frustrations that the American people feel that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street. And yet you’re still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this problem in the first place.” For many who were disappointed with Obama’s aligning with Wall Street after taking office, such words meant that the president clearly saw Occupy’s agenda as reshaping the national debate.9
Proactively Framing the Movement
Only two weeks after occupying Zuccotti Park on September 17, the Occupy movement was a national phenomenon. But activists took nothing for granted, including their ability to continue camping in the private park. Mayor Bloomberg’s assurance that the city would provide Occupiers with locations to protest meant that a quick eviction would appear hypocritical; nonetheless, activists took a number of proactive steps to protect the occupation by framing it as a political gathering rather than a squatters’ encampment.
To this end Occupy maintained a library of progressive books, many donated by publishers and authors eager to connect their works with the emerging movement. Activists also launched the Occupied Wall Street Journal newspaper, whose 50,000 press run was funded by the crowd-funding site Kickstarter. Adding to the sense that this was a political movement and not simply a homeless tent city were publicly posted agendas for each day’s activities, including training sessions, educational events, and the General Assembly meetings that became widely identified with the movement.
Since city restrictions banned electrical amplification at Zuccotti Park, speakers relied on a call-and-response system known as human microphones. Speakers’ words were repeated by the entire assembly, including each meeting’s starting call for a “mic check.” Richard Kim described a meeting on October 6, 2011: “The overall effect can be hypnotic, comic or exhilarating—often all at once. As with every media technology, to some degree the medium is the message. It’s hard to be a downer over the human mic when your words are enthusiastically shouted back at you by hundreds of fellow occupiers, so speakers are usually pretty upbeat (or at least sound that way). Likewise, the human mic is not so good for getting across complex points about, say, how the Federal Reserve’s practice of quantitative easing is inadequate to address the current shortage of global aggregate demand . . . so speakers tend to express their ideas in straightforward narrative or moral language.”10
The call-and-response approach replicated a vision of grassroots democracy harkening back to the New England town meeting. This turned the General Assembly at Zuccotti Park into a model for the type of democratic system in which the people rather than big-money interests rule—a model to which Occupiers wanted the nation to return.
New York City activists had spent months preparing for September 17 and its aftermath. The structure, design, and agenda of the Zuccotti Park occupation were no accident. When Mayor Bloomberg announced that authorities would “clean the park” and evict Occupy on October 14, all believed that the mayor was calling the shots on behalf of Brookfield Properties, the private owner, and public sympathy toward the Zuccotti campers was strong. In fact, it was so strong that Bloomberg withdrew the planned eviction rather than face thousands of sympathizers planning to descend on Zuccotti Park on the morning of the 14th to save Occupy. The response to the possible shutdown of the encampment showed that Occupy had created a remarkable sense of community built along class lines. From activists wearing buttons to signs displayed in retail businesses, a new sense of unity emerged around Occupy’s slogan, “We Are the 99%.”
From the October 1 Brooklyn Bridge arrests to the October 14 planned eviction, media coverage of the movement increased exponentially. Although activists had long decried the widening gap between the rich and everyone else, Occupy’s 1 percent–versus–99 percent rallying cry publicized economic inequality in a way not seen since the New Deal. It was as if a big curtain titled “American Dream” had been pulled away, exposing a system rigged for the rich against the middle class and the rest of the 99 percent. The traditional media, rarely aligned with progressive attacks on the wealthy, provided surprisingly favorable coverage in Occupy’s first weeks. Rather than profile young anarchists expressing contempt for capitalism—the standard media image for antiglobalization protests—Occupy stories focused on hardworking, down-on-their-luck Americans who simply wanted a job, a roof over their heads, or a living wage.
These positive media stories were no accident. The Occupy movement relied on hard economic facts to make its case, and maintained an intellectual integrity that swayed mainstream reporters. The media portrayed the movement as more than angry youth acting out against authority. An online survey of traffic to the OccupyWallStreet website on October 5, 2011, found that Occupiers reflected the diversity of the nation. The report “Main Stream Support for a Mainstream Movement: The 99% Movement Comes from and Looks Like the 99%” revealed a surprisingly broad consensus that Occupiers were regular folks. This