"Loyal sons we'll ever be. High we'll hold your memory." Alma Mater, LaSalle College High School, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania
When Occupy Wall Street first set up camp in Zuccotti Park, New York in September 2011, I was curious. I sympathized with the main thrust of the protest: inequality is bad; we are the 99%. However, I didn’t (don’t) like confrontation, and I had hoped that the protesters wouldn’t break the law, or make a mess in the park. I didn’t honestly know what we could do about inequality, and I didn’t want to think too deeply about it. I had ended up on the lucky side of inequality, for the most part. Furthermore, Team Obama, whom I proudly voted for, would take care of it, I believed, as long as the Republicans didn’t get in the way. Trust the process.
I had gone back to work and live at Notre Dame, my alma mater, as the rector of a men’s residence hall, and so I wasn’t close to New York City at all. But by October, my curiosity brought me to peek at least at Occupy South Bend (Indiana), which had set up camp in the plaza facing the Morris Performing Arts Center, downtown. If it was over- or underwhelming, or if I awkwardly saw someone I didn’t want to be seen by, I would pretend I was just a passer-by, heading for a coffee at the South Bend Chocolate Company.
I visited the encampment on a dreary Saturday afternoon, after the initial Occupy energy had waned but before the police swept out the final campers from Zuccotti Park back in New York. I stayed long enough to listen to some debates on whether weapons would be allowed in the camp--no--and debates about how to hold debates. I came back one or two more times in the next week or so. Some of South Bend’s homeless population had joined the encampment. In my very brief visits, there seemed to be an over-emphasis on procedure, which I found tedious. There was a heated disagreement one time. Whatever the subject was, I recall a young man, about my age, passionately highlighting how he had been there longer than the others. He reminded me that I didn’t like confrontation.
From mainstream media I couldn’t avoid, from Notre Dame student murmuring in the residence and dining halls, and from my limited social circle, there seemed to be two reactions, if any, to Occupy Wall Street. One, “Yes, inequality is a problem, but what do those people want? What will they gain by this? This protest isn’t helpful. (Also, Obama is in, so stay cool).” Or, two, “Those people should just get a job, and a shower.”
The loyal sons and daughters of Notre Dame are the loyal sons and daughters of capital or at least of the professional managerial class. Therefore, we are not supposed to go to such protests or encampments. The loyal sons and daughters of Notre Dame are supposed to put their heads down and study during the week, lift up their heads to drink and watch football on the weekend, and graduate into good-paying jobs. Many are interested in changing the world, yes—“What would you fight for?” Notre Dame talks a lot about how the school and its people are changing the world. But the loyal sons and daughters are supposed to do that by raising money to build basketball courts in Jamaica through the “Bookstore Basketball” tournament. We are supposed to donate extra coats in the fall. We are supposed to shave our heads for the “Bald and the Beautiful” and grow beards for “No Shave November” to raise money to fight cancer. We are supposed to build houses in Appalachia over fall break. We are supposed to do the Urban Plunge in Philadelphia or Chicago over winter break. We are supposed to buy toys for poorer South Bend kids for Christmas. We are supposed to travel to Washington, DC, to learn about global “development” policy over spring break. We are supposed to raise money for the missions in Chile or the schools in post-Katrina New Orleans. Our undergraduate or graduate research is supposed to engineer prosthetics for veteran amputees or to support women entrepreneurs in Honduras. When we graduate, some of us are supposed to spend a year and a half in Uganda, as I did, or teach for two years in Catholic schools in Brownsville or Laredo, before we take our permanent places in the professional managerial, if not the owning, class. There, we are supposed to have ethics in our business dealings, and in our free time, do some volunteering. When we buy a home and start a family and are established, and perhaps even buy a second home, we are supposed to donate to Notre Dame and maybe even earmark it to the Appalachia seminar or to the missions. Or to a scholarship program, that can help underrepresented groups go to Notre Dame and rise into the ranks of the owning or professional managerial class. If they have good enough SAT scores, our sons and daughters are supposed to go to Notre Dame to continue the legacy and virtuous circle.
This is not to pick on Notre Dame alone--I just happen to know it well. This is the standard operating procedure of many universities, especially “elite”/elite-aspiring universities. Everyone at all those universities is apparently changing the world, all the time. At Notre Dame, there happens to be a Catholic tinge to it. We may add mention of the poor to the “prayer of the faithful” petitions. We have a vast body of “Catholic Social Teaching” and a Gospel, and from time to time, it makes us feel bad about the state of the world. We may go on a retreat to think and pray about injustice.
Right or left, religious or not, however, a couple things are understood. One: avoid confrontation and conflict. Don’t make others or yourselves feel uncomfortable. Two, which is related: don’t mention labor unions. They’re for other places. We don’t need them in our Notre Dame “family.” (Other so-called “liberal” colleges swiftly become very illiberal the moment there are rumblings of unionization.) Three: never, at least in a non-eschatological way, imagine a different system. Especially if you wish to be taken seriously, you must accept, embrace, practice, take your role under capitalism.
When it comes to the explicit questions of political economy, at Notre Dame and elsewhere, there exists a very limited spectrum of debate. At the right, the problem is: there are too many capital controls. There are too many regulations. Capital needs to be loosed even more, actually, for the United States to be “(more) competitive (again).” Then, we will reach a fair equilibrium of sorts, and if you work hard enough “like I (or my dad) did,” then you can make it too. Growth is good, as it lifts all boats. Don’t get in the way of growth. On the left end of this limited spectrum, we are to tax the rich a little more (but that’s not us!), provide more welfare benefits, and maybe cut the Pentagon budget somewhat. For overseas problems—we at Notre Dame are so damn global—increase development aid and support human rights. But, overall trust the process of regulatory, global capitalism. Don’t question the US-led world order. Yes, we err at times, but on the whole, we mean well. Especially with Obama and his best and the brightest whiz kids Ivy League advisors, whose ranks we might join one day, we can manage and engineer the domestic and global inequality away.
If we’re being honest, I think what we are asking--or praying--for is, “How can we change the world without really having to change?”
*
There are plenty of criticisms of Occupy Wall Street. One of the best shorter critiques came from Greg, a union electrician in South Bend, active in Jobs with Justice. Noticing that much of Occupy and the Wisconsin state house protests earlier in 2011 was led more by college graduates and white collar workers, he said at a central labor council meeting, “I’m with you. I’m standing with you all. But where were you all thirty years ago, when we [more blue collar workers] were taking it on the chin?” Touché. Working people of color, especially women, have similar and even sharper critiques: “Yes, but where have you been?” And so, good radicals, often by necessity, had been ahead of the curve well before Occupy, but Occupy pushed me, at least, finally to think outside that very limited and very manufactured spectrum. We have to start somewhere. (Organizer-scholars Jonathan Smucker and Astra Taylor, respectfully, provide two of the better, longer, and very fruitful critiques of Occupy Wall Street. They praise the conversations Occupy forced and the mutual aid it practiced, in the flesh, but they also push it/us to take the message beyond the park and to organize beyond the choir.)
Unless you own capital, capitalism eventually comes for you. It might take another thirty years, or come earlier like it did for Greg, but it comes. Capitalist logic commodifies every human activity and human being in the name of profit. Then it cannibalizes that which it no longer finds useful and seeks out new frontiers, both actual and constructed, where it can do the same. It can be regulated for a short time, but it gnaws away at any leash we give it. Since Occupy, we have seen how finance capitalism, after laying waste to people’s homes and livelihoods in the 2008 crash and Great Recession, has grown even more powerful and brazen. We have seen how capitalism outsources, offshores, and then eats up companies in the name of “private equity,” leaving working people in its wake. How it amasses fortunes in the health sector while millions can’t afford insurance or prescription drugs. How it outprices long-time residents in one part of a city while divesting from another part of the same city and how it uses race and fear to lubricate that cycle in search of profits. How it created the material conditions and ideologies that made us choose between public health and the “economy” in this pandemic, as if the “economy” is something that exists outside of public health and the lives of human beings. How capital played both sides in the 2016 election and then, despite feigned protests here and there, played the role Trump needed it to play while Trump mostly played his part to further enable capital. How it played both sides in the 2020 election. How it drives wars of empire and resource extraction and accompanying astronomical military budgets, passed with vast bipartisan support. How it pushes international “development” on the poor of the world as it continues to suck up the wealth from the global south. How it has created divisive yet profitable, advertising-algorithm-driven social media universes. How it restricts any debate on itself and yet convinces us we have a free press. And how in that press it stifles any meaningful discourse on inflation or supply chains or workers quitting, for instance. How it refuses to be tamed, how it greenwashes and PRs us just enough, while it continues to extract and lay waste to the planet. How it creates foundations, donates to universities, and gives to NGOs, not only to avoid taxes but also to de-radicalize and “professionalize” future change-makers.
Was Occupy Wall Street “Socialist”? Not exactly. It was probably more anarchist than socialist in its general outlook, but it was certainly anti-capitalist. Was it “successful”? No and yes. No, because here we are. The police broke up the encampment, and capital continues to reign and ravage. But yes, because occupying the park was just the tactic--not the goal--and here we are, finally debating capitalism in some corners of the mainstream (not insinuating that Ted McGrath is mainstream). Or at least, we are naming it. Capitalism has been so hegemonic that for most of our lives, we have not had to name it. It is just the air we breathe--and choke on. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (Mark Fisher), yes, but the great science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin provides hope: “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable, but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
I don’t believe in some “Socialism” that is a fully built operating system out there just waiting to be uploaded to replace capitalism. I ascribe to “socialism,” however, as a critique of the existing world order. It is a critique that must always be contingent on the actual material conditions of people’s lives, that must evolve, that must be rooted in radical love, that puts human beings over profit, and that can win power and effect change. For this radical socialist political bent, I partially credit Occupy Wall Street, now ten years ago, including that ornery, angrier young man who chastised the newcomers about procedure. One need not be a socialist or a Socialist to change the world (if interested, though, join a chapter). But, one must commit to fighting and organizing against capitalism.
It was not Occupy Wall Street, though, that first taught me that capitalism is the problem. Long before Occupy, from home to grade school to Notre Dame, it was the Gospel, the Hebrew prophets, or the Letter of James, for instance, that gave me the lens to see that capital is the false idol, and it kills.
Dr. King, Dr. Cornel West, and other prophets practice a radical Christian socialism that still affirms the dignity of a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk and still holds out hope that these "masters of mankind" may repent, but that does not mean we just sit back and pray for change to happen. Yes, we are a divided nation, but now is not the time for milquetoast “civil discourse “ or “unity.” We seek radical, loving, organized, justice-seeking confrontation. There is no change without changing ourselves.
PS.
Dorothy Day:
“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”
PPS.: repost: Examples of how “managed democracy” (S. Wollin) manufactures consent (N. Chomsky/E. Herman) and limits debate on so many issues.
1. COVID/Science
a. Yes, certainly get vaccinated, but the profits/power of big pharma are scandalous: https://theintercept.com/.../bayh-dole-act-public.../
b. NJ Sens Booker and Menendez are just as complicit as Sinema/Manchin and the GOP: https://www.salon.com/.../not-just-sinema-sen-bob.../
c. “In this house, we believe in science” is not good enough. Science has never existed outside of politics, nor should it, actually: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/carl-zimmer-virus/
2. Tech/Facebook
a. Facebook isn’t the problem. Well, it is, but it is much deeper The problem is surveillance capitalism: https://www.nytimes.com/.../12/opinion/facebook-privacy.html
b. With the unchecked power of "Bit Tyrants": https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1381-bit-tyrants
c. As Silicon Valley mystifies the labor which makes it possible, including the (global south) human beings behind the algorithms/AI/automation: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/.../belabored-work...
d. Two excellent Luddite podcasts to cut through the tech punditry/BS. (Luddites are not anti-technology btw--they are against the power structure over technology)
i. This Machine Kills: https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod
ii. Tech Won't Save Us: https://www.techwontsave.us/
3. Elections
a. Yes, Youngkin’s win in Virginia is a setback, but the manufactured crisis over "critical race theory" should not slow any of us down. For one, we educators must not stop teaching the truth, and here is one excellent resource for content/pedagogy: https://www.learningforjustice.org/.../teaching-hard-history
i. But also, it must be noted, “The Republican who just won in Virginia was an executive at the Carlyle Group--a private equity firm that has laid off thousands of unionized workers at the firms it acquires. But the Democrats couldn’t attack him on it. Because the Democratic nominee was a Carlyle investor.” (Gravel Institute) Capital plays all sides, and the people lose.
b. In Buffalo meanwhile, real estate capital made alliances across party lines to defeat the woman who won the Democratic primary. The Democratic Party cannot make the claim that she was “unelectable” (a la Bernie 2016/2020). Simply, her platform and movement simply threatened capital: https://www.newyorker.com/.../another-buffalo-is-possible
c. In Jersey City, real estate capital came out hard to back the NJ Dem machine incumbent, but bravo to our DSA-sponsored Joel Brooks who came within 180 votes for a city council seat. We will keep organizing to chip away, e.g. for affordable housing: https://www.jacobinmag.com/.../new-jersey-city-council...
4. Labor
a. I’m not sure what it means for the 2022 or 2026 or 2030 midterms, but I believe we professional middle-classers should be standing in solidarity with workers on/near strike at John Deere, Kellogg’s, Nabisco, Frito Lay, Kaiser Permanente, Tenet, Warrior Met, etc., and with workers attempting to unionize at Staten Island’s Amazon warehouse, for instance: https://www.commondreams.org/.../after-months-organizing...
b. Stand with the workers, even if in some sectors, they happen to be MAGA. Stand with coal miners, even as coal contributes to climate change--the miners themselves aren’t responsible for cooking the planet. The system of extraction/financial capitalism is. And, the road to climate justice goes through worker justice: https://www.thedigradio.com/.../organizing-dsas-pro-act.../
c. “Corporate America wants to frame this as a ‘labor shortage.’ But what’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a health care shortage. Unless these shortages are rectified, many Americans won’t return to work anytime soon. That’s the real lesson here. I say it’s about time.” (Robert Reich).
5. Inflation
a. And of course, we’re all supposed to scared of the coming inflation, but inflation (like science and tech) does not exist outside of history/politics: https://www.thedigradio.com/.../inflation-politics-with.../
b. https://economicupdate.libsyn.com/china-and-inflation...
6. Alec Baldwin
a. Hollywood/SNL virtue-signaling liberalism is pretty easy. But, who are the obscured workers behind all the shows we stream from Netflix, Disney, and Hulu?: https://www.jacobinmag.com/.../halyna-hutchins-shooting...
i. Robert De Niro, anti-Trump, yes, but disaster capitalist: https://theintercept.com/.../robert-de-niro-barbuda.../
b. Support IATSE: https://www.labornotes.org/.../shocking-death-set...
7. Trumpism
a. Yes, absolutely fight this brand of authoritarianism, but long ago we submitted to "inverted totalitarianism" (Sheldon Wollin). Fight that, too: https://press.princeton.edu/.../democracy-incorporated
8. Supreme Court
a. “When people say that they want expertise that’s beyond politics, what they mean is people who learn in law school to pretend they’re not doing politics and do it anyway” (Samuel Moyn): https://podtail.com/.../behind-the-news-the-reactionary.../
9. War/The Rest of the World
a. On the Afghanistan withdrawal, beware not just the Tucker Carlsons but the Jake Tappers, too: https://www.thedigradio.com/.../the-media-war-w-adam.../
b. In between the big stories, beware the lower hum manufactured-consent on China, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, Colin Powell hagiography, etc.
