This is What Democracy Looks Like: The Occupy Movement Will Reinvent Itself

This is WhatDemocracy Looks Like:    The OccupyMovement Will Reinvent Itself byMark Naison | NewBlackMan
Thetent cities have been bulldozed and the parks have been cleared.  Big citymayors see clean spaces, washed and sanitized, and hope that the Occupationswere a bad dream. Obama supporters hope that the three months of protestrepresented a brief detour in a progressive movement that will ultimately cometo its senses and concentrate on re-electing the president and campaigning forDemocratic candidates for congress, realizing- with the help of a collection ofbizarre and frighteningly ill informed Republican presidential aspirants--,that the most important initiatives to achieve a more just society take placeat the polls, not in the streets.
It'sa plausible scenario, to be sure, neat and rational. As many liberal punditshave pointed out, taking practical steps to address the economic inequalityissues Occupy Wall street has raised- such as shifting the tax burden from theworking class and middle class to the very wealthy- can only be done bycreating electoral majorities in favor of such policies that don't currentlyexist, and that can only be achieved through the "grunt work" of voterregistration an organizing election campaigns in behalf of progressivecandidates. And there is no question that many constituencies who were uneasilyallied with the Occupy movements, particularly labor unions, plan to do justthat in coming months and coming years.
ButI am not sure that the experience of the last three months can be nearlyexcised from the national consciousness and the energy of Occupy supportersnearly directed into electoral activity.
Firstof all, the experience of direct democracy in the Occupy movement has had aprofound, even transformative effect, on those who have participated; one thatwill not be so easy to persuade those who have experienced it torelinquish.  The young people in this movement—part of an entiregeneration facing a stagnant job market and crippling debt—discovered  they had the power to make the wholeworld pay attention to what they were saying by occupying public spaces,working outside normal political channels and refusing to anoint leaders tospeak for them. 
Butit was more than the reaction of the outside world that was transformative. Itwas the transformation of the Occupy spaces themselves into places where freediscussion and debate could flourish in ways that existed nowhere else in thesociety, certainly not in increasingly corporatized and bureaucratizeduniversities, stressed filled public schools under pressure to deliver highertest scores, or workplaces ruled by dictatorial managers cognizant that a tightjob market assured them of worker compliance.  
WhenOccupiers chanted "This is what democracy looks like," they were proclaimingwhat few people have been willing to acknowledge—that lived democracy and freedomof expression have been eroding in the United States for some time, asinstitutions become more hierarchical and wealth has been more concentrated atthe top.  What the Occupy movement created was a space for a no holds bardiscussion of a huge array of issues where people, thanks to the mic checkmethod of repeating comments, actually listened to one another.  Do suchfree zones exist in our schools,  universities and workplaces?  Ifthey did, the Occupy movements would not have generated the levels ofparticipation they did!  There is a reason why Occupy movements sprung upin over 300 towns and cities and that is because they embodied a deeply feltneed for freedom of expressions as well as a hunger to address issues ofeconomic inequality and the mal-distribution of wealth.
Whichbrings us to the next point about why this movement is likely to persist andthat is the reaction of authorities, whether mayors, or college presidents, toits emergence. The size, technological sophistication, and at times theastonishing violence of police mobilizations against Occupy protests dramatizedto the nation, and the world, the degree to which the United States has becomea police/national security state willing to go to extraordinary attempts tointimidate its own citizens.  To immigrants, and to people living inminority and working class communities, particularly young men, this insight isnothing new—they have experienced intimidation by police forces and othergovernment authorities on an almost daily basis, not only in theirneighborhoods, but in prisons and detention centers. But until the Occupymovement, most middle class Americans including college educated youth, couldignore abuses of police power or pretend that the most extreme examples (thepolice murder of an unarmed Sean Bell in Queens NY) were more the exceptionthan the rule.
Butnow, for three months, the people of the United States have been exposedto a steady array of images of police forces using helicopters,bulldozers, sound cannons, tear gas and pepper spray not only againstprotesters peacefully assembling in universities and public parks, but againstrepresentatives of the press covering these events, and doing so with thecollusion of the federal office of Homeland Security.  Not only were suchpolice tactics borrowed from the playbook used by police in gentrifying citiesto intimidate and contain minority youth, they drew upon post 9/11 NationalSecurity protocols used to combat terrorism such as closing bridges and subwaysand placing limits on what photographs might appear in the press.
Inthe repression of the Occupy movement, images of free speech under attack werecreated that cannot be neatly excised from the national imagination any morethan pictures of Bull Connor unleashing police dogs and water hoses on teenagemarchers  in Birmingham in 1963.
Ifthe Occupy movement's showed us, in words and deeds, "This is What DemocracyLooks Like" those attacking the Occupations showed the world, albeitunintentionally "This is What a Police State Looks Like."
Itwould be nice, our liberal friends tell us, if we could forget all of thisunpleasantness and go back to the days of the first Obama presidential campaignwhen youth idealism and energy were directed to electing the first blackpresident. Now, they say, it's time to give him a second term, with a strongDemocratic congress, so he can finish the job he started.
Butthe given what is happened in the last three months, I don't think that islikely to happen. The genie has been let out of the bottle. Young people whohave had a tasted of lived democracy of a kind they had never experienced andthen watched it snuffed out by highly militarized police units using war on terrortactics will not become obedient doorbell ringers for a president who ignoredtheir protest and may have secretly encouraged its suppression.
TheOccupy movement may not take the same form as it did this fall, but it is verylikely to reinvent itself in forms that will not please its liberal would becontrollers, or its conservative critics.
Andthat is a very good thing for the country.
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Mark Naison is a Professor ofAfrican-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director ofFordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depressionand White Boy: A Memoir. Naison isalso co-director of the BronxAfrican American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will bepublished in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the1930's to the 1960's.