a tactic is better understood as one move among many in an epic game of chess (with the caveat that the powerful and the challengers are in no sense evenly matched). A successful tactic is one that sets us up to eventually achieve gains that we are not presently positioned to win. As Brazilian educator Paulo Freire asked, “What can we do now in order to be able to do tomorrow what we are unable to do today?”39 Thus, a tactic is a kind of stepping stone.
By this definition, the primary tactic of Occupy Wall Street (physical occupation of public space) could be considered enormously successful. We subverted the decades-old hegemonic conservative narrative about our economy and our democracy with a different moral narrative about social justice and real democratic participation. As a result, we are arguably better positioned than before to make bold demands, as we can now credibly claim that our values are popular—even that they are common sense—and connected to a substantial social base. With a new broadly resonant vocabulary, we are now better positioned to organize popular social bases to take more powerful political action. Such a shift in the constellation of popular meanings is among the central operations required in a long-term hegemonic struggle.
I want to suggest that the primary reason the tactic of occupation resonated so far and wide is because it served as a symbol about standing up to powerful elites on their own doorstep. To most sympathizers, the “occupy” in “Occupy Wall Street” essentially stood in for the F word. Millions of Americans had been waiting for someone or something to stand up to Wall Street, the big banks, the mega-corporations, and the political elite. Then one day, a relatively small crew of audacious and persistent New Yorkers became the catalyzing symbol of defiance we had been waiting for.
Thus, Occupy Wall Street served as something of a floating signifier, amorphous enough for many different kinds of people to connect with and to see their values and hopes within the symbol.40 Such ambiguous symbols are characteristic of popular challenger alignments. Many objects can serve as the catalyzing symbol, including actions (e.g., the occupation of Tahrir Square or of the Wisconsin State Capitol), individual politicians (quintessentially Juan Perón in Argentina), or even constructed brands (e.g., the “Tea Party”). As these examples suggest, this phenomenon can be seen in all kinds of political alignments, across the ideological spectrum. In all cases though, a good degree of ambiguity is necessary if the symbol is to catalyze a broad alignment. If the symbol’s meaning becomes too particular—too associated with any one current or group within the alignment—it risks losing its powerfully broad appeal.
It is important to note that although the signifier is floating (i.e., not peg-able), it is not empty of content. First of all, it has to feel meaningful enough to resonate. Furthermore, different symbols tend to pull in different directions (depending partly on the strength of the organization and “ground game” of those who are pushing or pulling them). Candidate Barack Obama as floating signifier, for example, pulled a lot of grassroots energy into what has in many ways turned out to be an establishment-reinforcing direction. Occupy Wall Street as floating signifier, on the other hand, pulled—at least initially—both popular and some establishment forces in the direction of the fired-up, social justice–oriented grassroots movement, intent on systemic change.41
When a challenger social movement hits upon such a catalyzing symbol, it’s like striking gold. One might even argue that broad political alignments are constituted in the act of finding their floating signifier. Hitherto disparate groups suddenly congeal into a powerful aligned force. Momentum is on their side and things that seemed impossible only yesterday become visible on the horizon.
It is important to recognize a few things, then, about our relationship to the tactic of physical occupation during Occupy Wall Street’s brief run:
1 It accomplished more than any of us really imagined it would have.
2 A significant part of the tactic’s political value was in serving as a popular defiant symbol that shifted prevailing meanings in the culture.
3 It was incredibly resource-intensive to maintain.
4 The tactic was not going to serve us forever. Indeed, its utility was waning prior to our eviction.
5 Moving forward in the years ahead, we will have to come up with other popular expressions of the values and hopes that OWS brought to the surface.
Here it becomes important to distinguish between our tactics, our message, and our movement. Of these three, our tactics should be the thing we are least attached to. In oppositional struggle, it is critical to maintain the initiative; to keep one’s opponents in a reactive state. This is not accomplished by growing overly attached to any particular tactic—no matter how well it worked the first time—and thereby doing exactly what our opponents expect us to do. Of course, it is a lot easier to conceptualize the need to be innovative and to keep our opponents on their toes than to actually come up with the right thing at the ripe moment to make it so. Moreover, it is wrongheaded to get caught up in the elusive search for the perfect silver bullet tactic. Movements are, more than anything else, about people. To build a movement is to listen to people, to read the moment well, and to navigate a course that over time inspires whole swaths of society to identify with the aims of the movement, to buy in, and to take collective action.
The “Occupy” in Occupy Wall Street was the tactic that launched a movement for social justice and real democracy onto center stage in the United States, even if ephemerally. It served as the initial catalyzing symbol. Hopefully ten or twenty years from now, when we look back at all we have accomplished together, we will credit this mobilization as a critical moment that helped to spark and then build a longer-term movement. However, when we fail to find other successful tactics—and other popular expressions of the movement’s values—we are pronounced dead as soon as the initial tactic fades. Of course, most successful movements are first pronounced dead many times over. Still, this challenge of popular mobilization remains looming before us. Fortunately, Occupy Wall Street—and the tactic of occupation—was neither the primary message nor the movement itself.
And, fortunately, we do not have to reinvent the movement’s message from scratch, come the next rounds. What emerged in tandem with the deployment of the captivating tactic of occupation was the compelling message that “We are the 99%!” We might well consider this among our core messages in a new movement era. The framework of the 99% accomplishes a number of important feats that it is important to explicitly note:
The 99% frames the consolidation of wealth and political power in our society—the central grievance of the Occupy movement and a central crisis of our times.
The 99% frames a class struggle in a way that puts “the one percent” on the defensive (whereas the common accusation of “class warfare” had somehow tended to put a lot of people in the middle on the defensive).
The 99% casts an extraordinarily broad net for who is invited to join the movement. Most everyone is encouraged to see their aspirations tied to a much bigger public. Thus it frames a nearly limitless growth trajectory for the movement.
The meme of the 99% is a real winner. Its message and framework may prove better at helping us “weather the winter” than any single tactic could. It points the way towards a necessary expansion. It encourages us to not just act on behalf of, but alongside, “the 99%”; to look beyond the forces already in motion, to activate potential energy, to articulate a moral political narrative, and to claim and contest our culture and our future.
Of course, many critics from the left and from the academy have taken issue with the meme of the 99%, arguing that it poses a false unity that obfuscates important heterogeneity and power concentrations within an absurdly broad category. Analytically, they are of course correct, but these critics neglect to consider this framing as a power move—what Pierre Bourdieu might call a “worldmaking” operation. Here again is a classic example
