The Failure of Occupy Wall Street

Last year, the Occupy movement, lead by Occupy Wall Street, burst on to national prominence, protesting against inequality in America. One year later, the Occupy movement is dead, having accomplished almost nothing. The Occupy movement’s failure poses useful lessons for social movements. There are three main reasons Occupy failed:

1. No objective. In a way, describing the Occupy movement as a failure is somewhat nonsensical, since it had no clear goals to fail at. Earlier in the movement, people declared the movement was a success because it “raised awareness” of issues. What issues? Occupy was so vaguely defined that it attracted a diverse coalition that could not decide on a policy platform, beyond slogans (“we are the 99%”, which is about as all encompassing as a slogan can get). At best, the objective was a  demand for greater influence in politics, but greater influence in politics is only a tool to accomplish a platform. In Occupy’s case, no such platform existed.
2. No organization. Occupy Wall Street originally used direct democracy to make decisions, and tried to make decision making as open as possible. As the movement grew, direct democracy became increasingly unwieldy. Occupy Wall Street used “working groups” to manage specific aspects of running the protest. However, this system was generally a failure, where leaders of fundraising groups would not know the people in charge of spending funds, for example. Efforts to unify the various disparate movements across the country under one governing system failed.
3. Refusal to interact with power brokers. For a movement to be successful, it must communicate demands and draw concessions from powerful organizations or institutions. Occupy never seemed to try to interact with the general political system. It did not have much fundraising power for candidates, did not field its own, and did not serve as an effective endorsement tool. Occupy Wall Street found out how impossible it was to operate an organization without the assistance of the groups it was protesting against, and opened up a bank account to manage assets. For the most part however, the movement’s distance from institutions guaranteed a lack of effectiveness.

The lesson for future social movements is clear: Have an objective, a plan, and execute the plan to accomplish change. Occupy had no objective, minimal organization, and made little effort to actually change the system. As a result, it will be remembered as an odd curiosity of fall 2011, rather than the dynamic transformational movement it purported to be.