Occupy from NYC to Chicago: Outraged Americans Raise Their Heads Again

We were so outraged. Live, worldwide occupations and protests. Marches and rallies. Slogans and songs. From one side of the ocean to the other, it looked like a movable feast. Madrid’s calling, New York’s answering. Round trip with a stopover in Vancouver. Where the former bad-boys from the anti-capitalist Canadian magazine Adbusters had caught the Spanish flu of the “Indignados” and revived it in the New World. With an eye to the Arab Spring of Tahrir Square. And above all, a new slogan that would ring around the planet: Occupy Wall Street. Now what?

One year after the May revolt, the movement is still asking unanswered questions. How did it turn out? The guru of Adbusters, Kalle Lasn, saw this coming. And as early as November, on the eve of Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s police raid that would permanently clear out Zuccotti Park in New York, he had thrown it out there as a provocation: We declare ‘victory’ and all go home. In the end, Occupy Wall Street had already gotten their results and in just two months. The occupation, if not of Wall Street, then at least of the adjacent square — named, by its own twist of fate, “Liberty Square,” but capitalistically baptized anew as “Zuccotti” in honor of the Italian-American real estate developer and lord of the neighborhood — had brought attention from around the world back to the crisis that everyone, at least here in America, said was over, but whose costs actually have been paid, and still are being paid, on the backs of the unemployed.

How did it turn out? Barbara Celis, journalist and blogger from El Pais, saw the birth of the movement back in her country of Spain and then followed it here to New York where she lives now. Following the thread from one side of the ocean to the other, she’s tracked similarities and differences between the “Indignados” and the Occupiers. The M-15, she says, the Spanish May 15 movement, was born spontaneously — a few dozen people camped out there in the Puerta del Sol suddenly became a multitude thanks to the police action that wanted to evacuate them — and instead drew thousands of supporters. The occupation in New York, on the other hand, was planned out — not only by Adbusters launching the watchwords, but actually by militant Spaniards transplanted here at New York University. They are the Spaniards of the American movement: Young professors whom everyone knows by name, Fernando, Vicente, Angel, Begona, who worked for weeks at the debut of Occupy in endless meetings in Tompkins Square. That’s not all. The Spaniards are also the guys who organize the Livestream network here in New York, a very successful experiment in Madrid that was thus transplanted to the United States.

The two movements, however, have been split for a while. The “Indignados” were dispersed and they declined in Europe: an occupation here, an anti-eviction initiative there. Despite getting cleared out of New York, Occupy, on the other hand, has continued to function intermittently, thanks also to funding which, as you know, here in America, is everything and which has fueled the movement with donations from VIP friends. Everything, even protests, in the United States are a spectacle. In fact, in Liberty-Zuccotti, Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon, Radiohead, Crosby and Nash, Jackson Brown, and Rage Against the Machine all paraded right away. But there are also intellectuals who are committed and curious like Slavoj Zizek and our Roberto Saviano.

How did it turn out? It’s not over. Just this week the movement came back to raise its head again. Not only in New York where the May Day blitz made it clear that another bang is possible. Already this weekend, in Chicago, the People’s Summit is taking place, in preparation for the big demonstration slated for Chicago on May 20, coinciding with the NATO summit that President Obama — in anticipation of likely disturbances — has moved from his city to Camp David. The Occupiers’ tents have already moved in recent days, now to Charlotte, NC, for the annual meeting of shareholders of the merry Bank of America, one of the Wall Street giants which has, with its little games of mortgages and derivatives, contributed to the Great Recession and left thousands of poor people evicted. Watch out, because this is not a one-shot demonstration. Back in Charlotte, in September, Obama will be celebrated at his party’s Democratic convention. The guys from Occupy have every intention of spoiling the party because of its un-kept promises.

So, we were so many outraged people — and we’re still outraged. It’s just that the unity of purpose across the ocean is no more. Our poor Europe, with Spain in the lead, trudges into the recession that America has left behind: It threatens to become a powder keg in which the former “Indignados” will be remembered as the lambs of the group. Here in America, however, the protests will inevitably be intertwined with the electoral campaign, which in November threatens to defenestrate the first black president from the White House. Perhaps thanks to the guys who are now singing, “We are the 99 percent.” But continuing to keep the protest wave high — as the savviest Democratic strategists fear — will make the game of all the people on the right and especially of Mr. One Percent; yet another billionaire laughs, Republican candidate Mitt Romney.