By James Davis
It’s hard not to feel moved by the sheer enormity of the encampment at Occupy Wall Street. I went with my family on “Columbus day” and was inspired by it despite (and maybe because of) its messiness, its unruliness, and the irreducibility of its many messages to a unified political position, much less a policy proposal. But even though I find the criticism of the occupiers misplaced (“What do they even want?” “Why don’t they offer solutions?”), I’m no anarchist and my enthusiasm was tempered by the sobering realization that what the occupiers actually spend a lot of time doing is defining their own internal procedures. Admittedly I’m saying this based on limited exposure to one General Meeting. But even as the occupation has taken on broader symbolic significance over the past two weeks, prompting unions, community groups, and even the Democratic party to gamble on affiliation or endorsement of various kinds, its participants have been compelled to turn their attention inward toward Zucotti Park as much as outward toward Wall Street, the media, and their fellow travelers on the Left. In this respect I left feeling like Occupy Wall Street has a lot to tell us about radical teaching and radical learning but maybe not in the obvious ways.
Never mind (for the moment) the substantive claims the occupiers make about the depredations of the financial system, I’m talking about how a community that’s as closely scrutinized and as committed to egalitarian principles as this one even functions and sustains itself. The group was caught up with issues that, on one hand, seem exceedingly mundane given the vast political energy they’ve tapped into: proper vs. improper ways to get “on stack” to publicly address the group, what kinds of body language constitute “violent” behavior toward others, etc. On the other hand, it was also caught up with some fairly urgent internal procedural matters: what to do about the fact that some people are doing drugs in the park at night, the fact that some occupiers aren’t even necessarily aware of the political dimension of the demo, or the fact that the commitment to non-violence has not been practiced consistently among the demonstrators. These are difficult issues to resolve for a fluid group keen on inclusivity and the decentralization of authority. They were trying hard, however, and it struck me (and I guess this is an implicit question to readers) that in addition to teaching about radical ideas themselves, perhaps a bigger challenge to radical educators is to create spaces and institutions in which people can practice alternative procedures to those that prevail in most of the contexts in which we operate: that is, extremely hierarchical ones with clearly centralized authority. Whatever happens to Occupy Wall Street, its fate seems tied to the occupants’ ability to manage the tension between its ethic of decentralization and its burden (if it can be put that way) to channel the discontent and the imagination of the political Left. What are the radical spaces and institutions that prepare people to perform a task this challenging and complicated? A person doesn’t just step into that park knowing how to navigate it and articulate that knowledge to others. How might radical educators teach the procedural skills of radical movements in the process of teaching what we might call content?
Finally, in terms of teaching ABOUT Occupy Wall Street, I wonder whether people are using amateur video footage in (or out of) their classrooms? Here is a clip that I found very interesting, amateur in one sense, though the videographer is actually a professional filmmaker (“The Battle for Brooklyn,” on abuse of eminent domain to create The Atlantic Yards, is his latest).
Kate
radicalteacherblogeditor
Thanks, James. You ask: “What are the radical spaces and institutions that prepare people to perform a task this challenging and complicated?” Good question! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of those spaces was the classroom? The clip you link to in fact presents a vision of what I wish my classroom looked like: a space of intense, open dialogue where genuine differences–and grounds of agreement–are discovered, tested, articulated. I can even take a little profanity in my classroom, too. But I confess that the conversations in my class rarely have the urgency and honesty that characterize the exchange captured on film here. Perhaps that’s because our classrooms are almost always, despite our best intentions, hierarchical, reflecting the nature of the institutions in which they reside. Perhaps the occupation, and the conversations taking place there (however messy, unruly, seemingly mis-directed at times), can provide an opportunity for teachers and students to re-think, once again, what we’re doing and how to do it. Pie in the sky? Perhaps. But as Zizek told the occupiers, “Don’t be afraid to want what you really desire.”
Great post! You’ve hit the nail on the head concerning OWS’s obsession with process. Have you seen the article concerning this subject by Frank Furedi? As he explains: “The obsession with rule-making and process within the Occupy movement is now discussed as the defining feature of this new radicalism. One of the websites supporting the occupations declares that ‘the non-hierarchical decentralised structure, the inclusiveness and cooperation, are staples of the occupations’. Time and again, the occupiers boast that they are leaderless and non-hierarchical. Indeed, they have invented rules for achieving consensus without the need for political debate or an old-fashioned show of hands. Instead, agreement or dissent is expressed through silent gestures, such as waving your arms upwards to show consent or downwards to signal disagreement.” See: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11556/
Real democracy is hard. That was my first thought and comment to many I spoke with after attending and speaking at the initial general assembly for my local #Occupy group. That real democracy is hard is, in my view, the reason we do not have it or have ever actually experienced it in our lives or in America.
All of our experiences with participation in quasi-democratic situations and institutions have always been done under the guidence of a predetermined hierarchal apparatus that was at no time under our control or subject to our discretion in a democratic way. We are not conditioned to accept that everyone’s perspective is of equal importance and validity. In fact, it is the exact oppisite.
We live in a society that only the winner’s viewpoint is the one that matters. Majority rule and concensus are certainly not the same.
“How might radical educators teach the procedural skills of radical movements in the process of teaching what we might call content?”
I think certain communication tactics from Occupy Wall Street might work well in the classroom, such as hand signals that allow large groups of people to communicate on multiple levels simultaneously. This might also eliminate, or at least distort, the traditional Initiation/Response/Evaluation sequence by which teachers often reinforce classroom hierarchy. Students might even facilitate classroom discussions themselves. There are many approaches that should, I believe, be experimented with.
But perhaps the OWS experience is suggesting that “radical spaces” should become more of a synthesis between classroom and community–connecting students to the local community. A wonderful part about this specific “movement” (or “moment”) is that there are so many occupations. This creates an opportunity for teachers in hundreds of cities to engage their students not simply in an academic exercise, but in real democratic participation.
“I wonder whether people are using amateur video footage in (or out of) their classrooms?”
I assigned my class a short documentary on Occupy Richmond (VA) made by an occupier here in Richmond. The film borrowed footage from popular Occupy youtube videos and local news coverage, in addition to original content. It was a no-budget project made in a matter of weeks. During class discussion, students brought up the contrast between news footage and original footage, exploring the biases that both might entail. Here’s the film if you’re interested:
http://vimeo.com/32042955