Image of the Day

CW: The Occupy movement being the major public response to a 30
year class war against poor and working people, not just in the American
Empire but around the world, that to have this space – this space has of
course been consecrated by the Malcolm X’s of the world, the Desmond
Tutus, and so many others who have come through here – it has a certain
visibility, an international form, and so I figured it would be right.
SR: There have been some critiques of Occupy Wall Street from
the Left: for example, that it failed to significantly engage with the
labour movement and trade unions in the US or that its radically
decentralized structure made it very difficult to arrive at decisions to
accomplish particular objectives. And so moving forward, what are
the lessons that we, as participants in Occupy and supporters of it,
can learn from the movement?
CW: I think we have to draw a distinction between social motion and
social movements. Social movements are very rare because they require a
sophisticated level of organization, of leadership, of persons who are
highly courageous and willing to actually pay a price. Social motion is
very important because it helps shape the climate of opinion and that’s
exactly what the Occupy motion has been all about – it helps shape the
climate of opinion. But it was in many ways so heterogeneous, so diverse
in all of its various voices and perspectives. What I loved about it was that
there was a lot of respect. It wasn’t dogmatic, imposed from above,
professional revolutionaries coming in with Truth (with a capital ‘T’) and
imposing it on everybody. That’s what we were wrestling with in the 60’s
and 70’s. You didn’t have that kind of thing this time around – and that
was very important.
On the other hand, it was difficult to sustain it. But I think that the
next wave of social activism will be among young people and it’s going to
take a variety of different forms. I’m old school so I have to learn from
young people – for example, about social networking to forms of
democratic expression that I haven’t even thought of in that regard. I have
a respect for the anarchists precisely because – though I’m not one – they
have a powerful critique of concentration of power in the nation-state. And
as a black man in America dealing with the repressive apparatus, you live