Ask the Author Live: Mattathias Schwartz on Occupy Wall Street

This week in the magazine, Mattathias Schwartz writes about the origins and future of Occupy Wall Street. On Tuesday, Schwartz answered readers’ questions in a live chat. Read a transcript of the discussion below.

QUESTION FROM MARCO: Would it be fair to say that this American movement is Canadian in origin?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Marco, this is partly correct, but not entirely so. To the extent that the movement began with Adbusters, it has some Canadian roots.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: As that is where Kalle Lasn and the magazine are. But Micah White is in California. And the idea for Occupy Wall Street—first put forward by the magazine—was then largely and primarily taken up by people in the U.S.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: There were also significant numbers of organizers from other countries involved early on, particularly Spain and Greece.

QUESTION FROM TONY: I wonder, how does this movement compare in scope and size and importance, to the protest movements in the U.S.’s past, say that against the Vietnam War?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I feel like it is very early to make any kind of broad assessment like this.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: That being said, so far, this protest movement is much smaller than the Vietnam protests at their peak. But my sense is that it is still growing very quickly, and we are only a little more than sixty days in.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: So it is very hard to assess where it might end up.

QUESTION FROM DOUG: How much time have you spent at protests?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I would estimate 6-7 days reporting around Zuccotti and 60 Wall Street in New York; another 3-4 days interviewing sources in New York; 2 days of reporting in Berkeley; 2 more in Vancouver. Those are rough estimates—to know for certain I would need to consult my notes and itinerary.

QUESTION FROM JOPAH: Why do you think it’s more effective to occupy 24/7 vs weekly protests?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Hmmm … I don’t really have an opinion about which strategy is more effective.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: It might depend on what you are trying to effect, and where, and who is involved, and other circumstances. The 24/7 thing has clearly “worked” so far if we judge success by gaining media attention and rapid growth.

QUESTION FROM DUDLEY: I wonder, will we still be talking about this in a year’s time?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I have no idea. One thing that has certainly changed since the Vietnam era is the speed at which the media is able to deal with novelty.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Had a protest like this happened 20-30 years ago, it would have probably built momentum at a slower rate, but then stuck around for longer.

QUESTION FROM OMAR: Obama has been unusually silent on this protest movement, perhaps because he is so enmeshed with the 1% that is getting lambasted. What was your sense of people’s thoughts on Obama that you met at the various protests you attended? Are they expecting Obama to get more involved? Occupy the White House?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Well, to be fair to Obama, these protests seem to present a real puzzle for him, and for the Democratic Party.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: As my story shows, most of the people who started these protests self-identify as anarchists.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: My guess is that would pose a problem for more mainstream liberals who want to represent themselves as allies.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Although that has not stopped some—such as MoveOn, and Eliot Spitzer—from trying.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Omar, you asked what most of the protesters thought about Obama.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: In the early days of the protest, Adbusters actually wrote a letter to President Obama, which I talk about in the story. They had a list of demands, and the idea was that the protesters would stay in Zuccotti Park until they got what they wanted. This list of demands did not make it through New York’s “General Assembly” process. It’s hard to characterize the protesters as a group, but if I had to say where they came down on this question, I would say that many if not most have given up on effecting change through the political system as we know it. At least that’s the sense I’m getting right now…it could change very quickly, depending on any number of things.

QUESTION FROM GUEST: What strikes you as especially interesting about the origins of the movement?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: This whole “ego-less” thing is very interesting to me—I tried to focus on it as much as I could in the story.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The OWS movement has a real taboo on individuals accumulating power or authority over others. This isn’t unprecedented—some of it is reminiscent of Ella Baker and SNCC and lots of other historical precursors—but to me it was very interesting.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: You would think that *someone* would want to step out in front of this and claim to be in charge of it, but that’s not happened as of yet.

QUESTION FROM MAX: Is this a social-media based event; could it have happened without it?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Thanks—a great question—and a tricky one.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: One could argue that social media was responsible for the *speed* of the movement’s growth.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But there are also structural causes that don’t necessarily have anything to do with individual actors.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: A few months ago, Charles Blow published a very interesting chart on the New York Times’ op-ed page.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The headline was “Revolutionary Measures.” It compared income inequality, unemployment, median age, and various other factors, both in the U.S. and in the Arab world.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The U.S., as it turns out, actually has greater income inequality than Tunisia or Egypt.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: And our unemployment isn’t too far away from theirs either.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: We do have representative democracy, as opposed to authoritarian rule.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But to a certain extent, things can only get so bad economically, for so long, before you start to see some social instability. And I think that’s part of what we’re seeing here—though social media has certainly acted as an accelerant, as it did in the Arab Spring.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: (Phew! I apologize for the long answers … lots of great questions here and I want to get through as many as I can!)

QUESTION FROM JOSEPH KOLKER: Re: the question of Spanish and Greece influences and organizers, it seems to me that much of OWS’s style and form comes directly from the Spanish playbook, from the experiences of 15M. I’m curious as to why you didn’t give more attention to the international roots of OWS’s horizontal politics.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I did the very best I could to give a complete account of the movement’s origins.

QUESTION FROM JAMES PALMER: How do you explain the divide between the OWS movement and the Tea Party, given that they share many of the same complaints?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Thanks, James. This is a good question. If we were to imagine cruising by a Tea Party protest, and then an OWS protest and looking at the signs, I think there would be some consistent differences.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: At the OWS protest, you would likely see a lot of people who want state-subsidized tuition, federally-subsidized health care, more funding for public schools, etc.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: At the Tea Party protest, you would be more likely to see people who want the government to decrease its role—lower taxes, deregulated markets, etc

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The thing these two protests might have in common is that both have protesters who feel like they can’t get what they want through their elected representatives. And both have these very large institutions which they blame for their apparent powerlessness. For the Tea Party, it’s “the federal government.” For OWS, it’s “the corporations / the banks.” So yes, there are lots of similarities but also lots of tensions that would emerge on a nuts-and-bolts policy level.

QUESTION FROM DANNY: Did you get a chance to ask Kalle Lasn more about his 2004 Adbusters editorial, in which he lists of politicians with asterisks next to those who are Jews? Or did you speak to anyone in at the OWS rallies about Lasn’s dicey history singling out Jews? You referred to Lasn’s list as merely “controversial” but is there any concern among the larger movement about Lasn’s involvement?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Yes, I did ask Lasn about this at some length. As my article says, Adbusters has been a strident critic of Israel for some time. But as far as I know, the “dicey history” that you refer to is one article with the asterisks, which my article describes.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: You asked also about the larger movement. No one raised it as a concern in my other interviews.

QUESTION: Do you think that realists who also want change, reform and good governance by going outside political party system will find a place in Occupy? Can they co-exist with the anti-capitalists and anarchists? I am confused about the identity of the 99%.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Yes, the self-called “99 percent” seem pretty confused about this also.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The way OWS seems to be running itself right now, everyone has a place.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But there is no clear institutional mechanism for dealing with the kind of internal disputes that you’ve outlined regarding tactics, demands, and goals.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: This is part of the reason that OWS has grown so quickly. But it’s also part of the reason that its conversation, right now, seems mostly to be concerned about itself and its own inner workings, as opposed to a more outward-facing conversation about how to engage or not engage in the political process.

QUESTION FROM HENRY MCHENRY: Does anybody go down there to heckle them, then?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Yes, there have been a few hecklers passing through. There were photos of two men near Zuccotti holding signs that said “Occupy Desk” and “Get a Job.”

QUESTION FROM HENRY MCHENRY: And are they interested in hearing people’s disagreements with them?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Some yes, some no.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But most, yes.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I witnessed a few debates between people who work in finance and the protesters in the park.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: There are also lots of people with a background in the financial industry who are involved with the movement as organizers and/or funders.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: While the tents and encampment were still there, there were lots of debates and “earnest political conversation,” as I think the article puts it.

QUESTION FROM JANET: Earlier demos in Tahrir Square influenced OWS to come about, has OWS now had some effect on current demos at Tahrir Square?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I don’t know—I’m not at Tahrir Square or in much contact with people who are there.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: It is interesting how many of the OWS organizers have traveled abroad and seen other protests outside of the developed world. But again, you could look back to the global protest wave of 1968 and see the same kind of thing.

QUESTION FROM ALAN: Was Micah White accessible? I write for City on the Hill Press, UCSC’s student newspaper. I’d like to interview White.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I Googled him, found his email address and wrote him an email.

QUESTION FROM MEG: What does the movement look like without places to actually Occupy?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: It seems like there are lots places where there are still Occupy-style encampments.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Although Zuccotti Park is not one of them.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The question that you asked seems to be the question that the OWS protesters are asking one another right now.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: It will be interesting to see *where* and *how* this question gets answered—it may not be through the general-assembly format, and it may not be in Zuccotti Park.

QUESTION FROM JANET: Wasn’t what fueled 1968 protests largely the Vietnam War? Are today’s protests today going to be deeper and more prolonged because unlike stopping, finally, the war, solving the economic crisis: joblessness, huge income inequality, etc. may be harder to solve?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: This is a really great question, Janet. Thanks.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I can see how, from the federal government’s perspective, stopping an economic crisis might be harder than stopping a war.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I wasn’t alive during the Vietnam War, but my guess is that it wasn’t as easy to end at the time as it might seem in retrospect.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: You could also argue it the other way..

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: ..that the Vietnam War protests were deeper and more prolonged, because they addressed an immediate life-or-death issue—the draft—and they had a stronger moral imperative, with massacres like My Lai and a military command that used body count as one metric of its success.

QUESTION FROM JAMES PALMER: To pick up on an earlier question.. why do you think occupying a physical space is such a big part of this movement?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: In retrospect, some of the reasons that the “Occupy” tactic might have taken off so quickly are: It is fairly easy; it is highly visible and public; it requires a certain amount of work/commitment; it quickly attracts media attention; it puts participants in immediate contact with other participants; it is known to have worked in other protests.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: It also has disadvantages.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: One of the big ones is that the people who tend to have the most power—people who might be sympathetic to the movement—tend not to be willing to camp out indefinitely.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: So then this problem of “cred” can emerge, where the actual “occupiers” feel like they are making a sacrifice and being taken advantage of by more organized/powerful outsiders.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I think that’s one of the tensions you can see emerging in the dialog that I reported between Sage and one of the Zuccotti organizers, Lisa Fithian.

QUESTION FROM GAGE, OCCUPY BALTIMORE: Do you, Mattathias Schwartz, ala H. S. Thompson, have a personal interest in seeing Occupy succeed?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Um, no.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The last big social phenomenon that I reported on was Internet trolls, who are basically nihilists.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: If we can define “success” in terms of visibility, reporters like me tend to show up after success happens.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But going back to the trolls, there is a clear difference between meeting people and trying to understand their motivations/interests, and taking those motivations/interests on as one’s own.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: More questions, please, if you have them..

QUESTION FROM SHERI: Have you visited St. Louis, Mo.? Kiener Plaza

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Phew! Easy question—no, not yet.

QUESTION FROM CRIS: Could you share some insights and thoughts about the coercive force used by police throughout this movement (particularly at college campuses)?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I think you are probably referring to the pepper spray video from U.C. Davis, and incidents like that.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: In New York, it seems like there are some defined parameters between the police and the protesters regarding how far each side will go.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: They’re completely ad-hoc and no one has written them down, but in New York the use of force and violence, on both sides, seems to take place within a narrower range than in other places, like Oakland or U.C. Davis.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The question is who gets to be where, for how long, and what they are allowed to do while they are there.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: And the way that those rules get defined, by authorities, and then obeyed or disobeyed, by protesters, varies a great deal depending on the particular dynamics of each protest and local government.

QUESTION FROM ROSS: It seems like a lot of people at Occupy protests have been activists for a while and remain activists in other ways - whether they’re organizing in their communities or protesting in other ways or active in electoral politics or whatever. How do you think these currently separate activities will unite through the Occupy movement? Or will they at all? I hope I’m clear in what I mean there.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Yes, I feel like this question has probably come up two or three times, in various ways, throughout this chat.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: One thing that seems to be clear is that if political organizers want to engage the Occupy protesters, they will have to do so on the protesters’ terms.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: That means interfacing with them as individuals and participating in their process, no matter how unorthodox or time consuming it might be.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: This is one reason of many reasons that you haven’t seen much substantive interaction between the protests and the Democratic Party—very few people who are not wholly committed to the protests have the time or patience to participate.

QUESTION FROM BRITT: I know that OWS’s organizational structure is supposed to be one of consensus and without any centralized leadership, but I’ve also seen news reports that show smaller meetings and “think tanks” within different locations. Could you describe the leadership structure of the movement, and the process by which decisions are made?

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Sure … though the process itself continues to evolve.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: And different protests have their own versions of the process.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But generally you’ve got this “general assembly” which makes decisions by consensus whenever possible.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Anyone can show up to the general assembly; participants have lots of opportunities to give feedback through hand signals and break-out discussion groups.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: The meetings are led by a “facilitation team” that is supposed to rotate as much as possible. In New York, you see some facilitators over and over again, though there is this “Facilitation Working Group” that hold meetings on most days where anyone can show up and be trained as a facilitator.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Now, in New York, the general assembly model has shifted to a “Spokes Council” model that I describe, briefly, in the piece.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: But here are a couple of key themes that emerged during my reporting. First, there is a tension between using these horizontal processes and teaching them.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Lots of people seem to be showing up at these protests without any experience with general assemblies. Teaching them makes a slow process even slower.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Second, you can’t really have a group without leaders of some kind. There were always be a set of people who distinguish themselves through their speeches, or their hard work, or their ideas, or some other way. As soon as everyone else comes to recognize this and recognizes that everyone else is recognizing it, you will have a form of leadership.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: Okay, thank you for joining me, everybody.

MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ: I’ve really enjoyed this—thank you very much for your questions and your feedback.

Photograph by Ashley Gilbertson/VII. See more of Gilbertson’s Occupy Wall Street images at Photo Booth.