I was doing some research for the ‘origins’ section of the Occupy Wall Street
page on
Wikipedia which I have had free rein on for a while now. Doing
that research gave me an idea. In my Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies class,
a visiting professor came in and told us how the women’s right movement is
viewed as three waves, one starting in 1920, another that included the 1960s,
1970s and 1980s, and the third one that has lasted since the 1980s. She
cautioned us that this analysis is limiting. The protests against corporate
greed in American history can be categorized similarly as waves up to the
present day Occupy movements.
There have been intermittent protests throughout history against greed. These
included when workers marched down Wall Street in 1857 shouting “We want work!,”
when hundreds of people surrounded the house of speculator William Duer in 1792,
when Hoovervilles were set up across the United States by the homeless in order
to create homes for themselves, when ACT UP members chained themselves to the
New York Stock Exchange, and when the AIDS Coalition demanded lower prices for
AIDS drugs in 1980s. However, while these actions are honorable, they cannot be
considered part of an organized movement against corporate greed.
You may be asking when the first wave of such an anti-greed movement
occurred. Interestingly,
the first wave began in the 1750s and 1790s,
having an integral role in the nation’s founding. William Hoegland
writes,
“Amid horrible depressions and foreclosure crises, from the 1750′s through the
1790′s, ordinary people closed debt courts, rescued debt prisoners, waylaid
process servers,
boycotted foreclosure actions, etc.” Hoegland continues that while these people
were “legally barred from voting and holding office… they used their power of
intimidation to pressure their legislatures for
debt relief and popular monetary policies” and
had “high hopes for American independence” since they helped “enable[e]… the
Declaration of Independence.” This wave included what was called Shay’s
Rebellion by the elites, which took place in 1786 in “western Massachusetts
[where farmers]… marched on the state’s armory in Springfield to reverse
regressive finance policies that had again plunged ordinary people into debt
peonage and foreclosure while bailing out rich creditors.”
Eventually this
rebellion was crushed but resistance continued. In 1794 people were angry once
again, so they “took over the militia and debt-court system throughout western
Pennsylvania and western counties of neighboring states, flew their own flag,
and tried to secede from the United States and form an economically egalitarian
country”; they were eventually crushed by federal troops.
The
second wave really began in the 1870s which went beyond isolated
actions (since the 1830s) leading up to that point, especially concentrated in
tenants. While
the Grange was
founded in the 1860s, it developed as a force when it helped push laws that
would better the life of farmers, but unfortunately it wasn’t that radical and
opposed what they called “the lawless, desperate attempts of communism…” As a
result, their radical partner, the
Farmers
Alliance began to expand. This organization became what one could call the
economic movement of American farmers. It was able to offer an alternative to
the usual farm system in the south by allowing people to join them, form
cooperatives, and as Howard Zinn notes “buy things together and get lower
prices.” This movement coincided with the struggles of working people which at
this time were thinking of living in different ways and engaging in mass direct
action including parades and demonstrations. Zinn wrote that “what was
astonishing in so many of these struggles was not that the strikers did not win
all that they wanted, but that, against such great odds, they dared to resist,
and were not destroyed.” Such struggles included a series of strikes spread
across the country in 1877 with workers striking in solidarity but people like
Eugene Debs at the time criticized them. Other actions included the protest in
Haymarket Square in 1886 which a bomb exploded in the midst the police causing
them to fire on the crowd. This event sparked an international solidarity,
nationwide mourning and caused the radical labor movement to be crushed but kept
alive class anger for future young revolutionaries. Still, some of this energy
went into electoral struggles when labor candidates ran Chicago, New York,
Milwaukee, and other cities in the Texas, Ohio, and Colorado. However, the
farmers’ movement kept going and evolved into a populist movement.
In the 1890s, people began to rise again in what could be called
the third
wave. In 1891, the Populist Party was formed, starting in Tennessee when
mine workers took control of a mine in 1891. The next year it blossomed with
strikes across the country in New Orleans, Idaho, Philadelphia, and Buffalo
among others. The Depression in 1893, the first economic depression in US
history, deeply influenced and caused an upwelling of energy in the movement
against greed. People protested en masse in cities nationwide which, according
to Zinn, “forced city governments to set up soup kitchens and give people work
on streets or parks.” Even the radical feminist leader Emma Goldman told a
massive group of unemployed workers in Union Square (New York City) to raid
stores and take food. Eugene Debs, who had previously opposed the strike of
1877, became a socialist and led to one of the biggest strikes in American
history. In June of 1894, a strike of the employees of Pullman Palace Car
Company began, and they appealed to the American Railway Union led by Debs to
not handle Pullman cars which resulted in a nationwide strike. While cars were
derailed, the power of the state militia and federal troops crushed the strike,
resulting in Debs going to jail and denying he was a socialist in court.
Also this year, Coxey’s Army, made up unemployed workers, engaged in the
first major popular march on Washington in 1894. Ideas of socialism began to
influence those in the labor movement and radicalism spread. The farmers’
movement got even stronger, bringing in many from across the country and across
races to create a huge rebellion of farmers surpassing past farmers’ activism.
Even so, the poverty of farmers made it hard for them to support themselves, so
they changed strategy.
Being part of the new populist movement, new ideas were thrown around
including government-owned warehouses where farmers could store their produce,
the pushing of greenbacks to make more currency available which would be based
on how much farm produce one had, and in Dakota what Zinn calls a “great
cooperative insurance plan for farmers [that] insured them against loss of their
crops.” Different groups across the country were united in this new movement and
despite the differing situation of blacks and whites, to some extent they were
able to unite together while the establishment tried to keep them apart. This is
an accomplishment in and of itself. There were attempts to create a separate
farmers culture which included books, pamphlets, lectures, populist journals,
poems and even songs! The class-based nature of their thinking caused
Norman Pollack to draw parallels between the ideas of Marx and
the populists. Unfortunately, in 1896, the populist movement was sucked into
political process, making alliances with the Democrats. When the Republican,
William McKinley, won, in the first massive use of money during an electoral
campaign, populism that had been absorbed into the Democratic Party began to
disappear.
With the collapse of populism as a movement, a new movement developed. This
was the socialist movement which still exists today, but it is kept marginalized
through the influence of the corporatists. Herein began what can be considered
the
fourth wave. This movement began in the late 1890s with books like
Edward Ballamy’s
Looking Backward, Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle in
1906, and Jack London’s
The Iron Heel. What people forget is that
The
Jungle expressed the need for a socialist society where people worked
together cooperatively. A number of people were involved in such a movement
including radicals Emma Goldman and W.E.B. Du Bois, socialists Jack London and
Helen Keller and muckraker journalists like Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens. In
this time of radicalism, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union was
formed in 1909 which gained thousands of members every day and unionization of
industries began to grow. However racism was rampant through the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) and those at the top had huge salaries and were part
of the ‘high society’ who had goons to protect them and intimidate opponents.
Such a situation led to the creation of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) which is still around, with its members famously called “Wobblies” that
wanted to organize all of those in one industry into one big union instead of
smaller craft unions that the AFL was doing. The IWW advocated militant direct
action to put in place economic democracy in workplaces, what they called
“industrial democracy,” and they saw that strikes were only parts of the overall
class war, being training for a massive general strike to push out the
employers. Around this time as well the leader of the Socialist Party, Eugene
Debs, and Mother Mary Jones, a United Mine Workers of America organizer drew up
a constitution which stated in its preamble: “The working class and the
employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger
and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the
employing class, have all the good things of life.” This radicalism was
repressed by the state when it used all it could to stamp out IWW, but instead
they continued to spread bit by bit. They organized parades and mass meetings,
and groups began organize, but still the concentration of wealth remained.
Eugene Debs expressed what people felt at the time and used the resources of
the Socialist Party to propel his message. As the party became more successful
at the polls, they became critical of the tactics of the IWW, so they pushed Big
“Bill” Haywood out of the Socialist Party. Some advocating for women’s rights
began to tie their aims to socialism and radicalism, some even becoming
skeptical of the push for suffrage saying it didn’t free women. Later some of
this energy was channeled into the system to pass what is called by textbooks
“progressive” legislation which really just helped maintain the capitalist
system that favored big business, as the government was controlled by Wall
Street. Additionally, politicians like progressivist Robert LaFollette fended
off socialism (until the election of 1924) while others masqueraded as
progressives like Theodore Roosevelt. Still, the Socialist Party began to grow
and the IWW continued to agitate. Worker’s struggles continued.
When World War I came, the Socialist Party was weakened. Under the war
effort, these radicals were repressed and their message was silenced by using
the Committee for Public Information, the first government-created propaganda
effort in American history. Much of the IWW was arrested and thrown in jail, and
it didn’t recover for years. Toward the end of the war and afterwards, a Red
scare began in America, and radicalism was suppressed.
In the 1930s there was a flicker of hope for radicalism. People looked more
than ever to socialism and there were strikes that dotted the country as radical
solutions were demanded. But such “madness” was weakened with the New Deal which
while providing some jobs, didn’t do much to end the underlying conditions,
rather it reshuffled the cards, and is basically saved capitalism. Radicalism
continued, but there wasn’t any major movement other than the socialists, the
communists, and other radicals which challenged corporate greed. In the 1940s
such a movement was absorbed into the national mobilization as part of the war
effort. When the Cold War began, those on the radical Left were persecuted by
people in government, feelings which extended throughout the 1950s.
Then came the turbulent 1960s. These years led to a spurring of new knowledge
and the blossoming of left once again. Mainly this was focused on opposition to
the Vietnam War, but some connected this with other struggles. Martin Luther
King was one of these people. In 1968 he helped organize along with the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) what could be considered the
fifth
wave. This was called the Poor People’s Campaign. King wrote that “civil
disobedience has never been used on a mass scale in the North… If they are
developed as weekly events at the same time that mass sit-ins are developed
inside and at the gates of factories for jobs, and if simultaneously thousands
of unemployed youth camp in Washington… without burning a match or firing a gun,
the impact of the movement will have earthquake proportions.” King outlined
specific demands and said that the campaign will be non-violent in all its
regards. Sadly, he didn’t live through to this dream. Still, marchers descended
on Washington D.C. and the SCLC came up with five demands including living wage
jobs, popular involvement in government, capital for low-income people. Coretta
Scott King expanded this, demanding what was called an Economic Bill of Rights
along with others on the first day of protest (May 12, 1968), which meant
increased economic and human rights for numerous groups including whites,
blacks, Latinos, and Indigenous peoples. On May 21, 1968, a shantytown called
Resurrection City was set up, like the Occupy tent cities. It was under
surveillance by the FBI just like the current occupy movement. However, this
city barely lasted a month, as on June 24 police came in to remove the
protesters after their permit expired the day before. As a result, this movement
was criticized by the corporate media, and some involved regretted the
occupation all together. This, basically, ended this movement after six
weeks.
While activism continued into the following decades, the 1970s, the 1980s,
and 1990s, there was little of an organized movement. The only movement that
would be of note in opposing corporate greed would be the
anti-corporate-globalization movement which began in the 1980s worldwide but did
not come to America until 1999. From Oregon, it later culminated in what was
called “the Battle for Seattle.” This constitutes the
sixth wave. While
this movement continues to this day, it has been partly absorbed into the Occupy
movement.
In 2008 a new slew of protests occurred nationwide. This originated from
large opposition to the 700 billion dollar bank bailout and other smaller
bailouts of financial firms. Reporter Arun Gupta of the
New York
Indypendent started the call for protest by directing some of his activist
friends to send out an email to tell people or organize actions against the
bailout. Organizations like Democracy for America, the AFL-CIO, United
Federation of Teachers and ACORN participated in the protests, among others.
But, like Occupy, while the protest was organized by TrueMajority and USAction
members, it had according to one CNN article “no agenda, no leaders, [and] no
organizing group”; it just wanted to make the fat cats pay. This made people
like Ralph Nader comment that they should develop some concrete demands or else
they will collapse. Protests started on September 26 at 100 locations and by
September 28 it has spread to over 251 places including Los Angeles and
Rochester. By October, the movement had spread to other cities with protests in
Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Tampa Bay. Protests were even planned for
Washington D.C. to confront legislators. Of these protests, the largest was in
New York City in front of Wall Street where people yelled, “The bailout is
bullshit!,” “No more bail, send them [the bankers] to jail!,” and called the
bailout a “class war crime” as the
LA Times reported. Others carried
signs calling for taxing of the rich, ending the blind transfer of wealth to
Wall Street, and calling for the government to spend money to help people
(education, healthcare, housing) like they were going to help Wall Street. As it
turned out, the
seventh wave died when the bailout was passed. However,
people were still mad.
This is where the next movement came into being. Many on the Left dislike the
Tea Party Movement — the
eighth wave. As it turns out, popular anger
about the bailout created this movement which protested Barack Obama’s bailouts,
his huge stimulus package and other actions that benefited big banks. Unlike the
protests against the bailout of 2008, they had a political wing and they began
drafting candidates. Unfortunately for everyone, this movement was basically
co-opted by Big Business and it devolved from its origins by focusing on the
electoral struggle instead of direct action meaning that this wave came to an
end.
In 2010 anger was still brewing. Investigative reporter David DeGraw tapped
into this anger with videos in late 2009, and it culminated with a report in
February of that year in which he criticized the economic elite saying it was
time “
for
99% of Americans to mobilize and aggressively move on common sense political
reforms,” basically calling for a movement for the 99 percent, beginning
the ninth wave. This movement had set goals which DeGraw proposed himself
as “
common
sense reforms.” Over the next ten months DeGraw kept giving interviews
calling for peaceful civil disobedience and it seemed that those in the elite
were not happy so the site was repeatedly knocked offline. Eventually, as he
puts it in
a
post on Washington’s Blog: “As AmpedStatus was pushing for a decentralized
global rebellion against Wall Street and actively supporting the Egyptian
uprising against the IMF and Federal Reserve, the attacks on the site escalated.
In what appeared to be a fatal blow, the entire ISP network that the
AmpedStatus.com site was hosted on was knocked offline… With a very limited
budget, and in complete desperation, AmpedStatus put out a call for help… As
AmpedStatus.com came under attack, Anonymous was playing a key role in
supporting the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. When no one else with the needed
technical expertise would help us and it became apparent that we would have to
shut down our operation, several Anonymous members stepped up and offered to
support and defend AmpedStatus.com from further attacks. They assisted in
setting up a new hosting account and helped develop a new Independent social
network for the 99% Movement.”
This was a turning point and showed that others wanted to organize together
and create a mass movement against corporate greed. A new broad platform was
proposed. In February 2011, Anonymous called for “an occupation of Wall Street…
‘The Empire State Rebellion’” and after which “A sub-group within Anonymous then
joined with the AmpedStatus 99% Movement and we began a collaborative effort
known as A99” which announced their “first operation by posting a video to the
AmpedStatus YouTube page.” This was picked up by
Zero Hedge, an
economic news site and it quickly went viral. After this Anonymous called for a
“Day of Rage” in the United States and “throughout April and May, members of A99
were organizing and debating possible future actions [and] they decided that
Flag Day, June 14th, would be an appropriate time to launch actions.” On that
day in Liberty Park, only 16 showed up and four planned to occupy it
indefinitely, so they went back to the drawing board. It was the first stint at
Occupy. However, nearby there were activists setting up Bloombergville to
protest the budget cuts by New York City Mayor and Billionaire Michael Bloomberg
which some from the Liberty Park protest joined. Then when
Adbusters
magazine made the call to Occupy Wall Street and bring a tent, a new chapter
opened.
On September 17th, 2011 the world changed. A world revolution and the
tenth wave had begun. It started with people angry as hell but over time
it became more and more radical. The media will have you believe that the
movement was crushed and “died” in December 2011. This is completely incorrect.
The movement lives on. The tenth wave of the American anti-greed movement has
been upon us and has spread worldwide as had the anti-corporate-globalization
movement.
This rich history is an asset to the Occupy Wall Street movement. There is
much more action than just these then “waves,” but this analysis makes known the
history of challenging greed in this country. This analysis is confined to
anti-greed and therefore does not discuss the peace movement, the anti-nuclear
movement, and the movement to combat climate change. A Facebook event possibly
by an Anonymous member is proposing
an
eleventh wave in later 2013.
Adbusters has suggested making a whole
new movement called the World Pirate Party. However, we should instead
reinvigorate the base — the Occupy movement — by making it more powerful through
forming new chapters and uniting with other movements.
Burkely Hermann, a Maryland activist, has been interested in
politics since 2007, when he wrote an essay against the Iraq War. Now he runs
numerous blogs across the internet to educate the public on international,
local, and national topics.
Read other articles by
Burkely.
This article was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2013 at
7:59am and is filed under
Activism,
Civil Disobedience,
Classism,
Debt,
Finance,
History,
Labor,
Occupy movement,
Poverty,
Resistance,
Socialism,
Solidarity,
Tea Party movement,
Unions.
