the 99% occupy no man’s land

7/28/2019 The 99% Occupy No Mans Land

1/8

The 99% Occupy No Mans Land

by D.G. Mattichak Jr.first published in Moot Magazine


2/8

We are the 99%- the hand painted placards held high by masked, anonymous protestors

across the globe have captured the medias attention as the Occupy Wall Street movement

has spread through major cities around the world. From its beginnings as an activist group

inspired by the writings of author and journalist David DeGraw, especially his article that

was published on AmpedStatus.com entitled The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the

United States, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has evolved into something far greater than its

founders could have ever imagined back in February 2011 when it all started.

David DeGraw and the 99%

The central message of the OWS movement at the start was that 99% of Americans didnt

have any genuine political representation and so they were at the mercy of the 1% who did.

DeGraw emerged onto the online alternative journalism scene with his site AmpedStatus.com

only a couple of years ago but his message has been picked up with great enthusiasm, mostly

by a younger demographic that feels as if the GFC is the direct result of their elders greed

and corruption. His seminal work begins with a call for 99% of Americans to mobilize and

aggressively move on common sense political reforms and immediately found fertile enough

ground among those disenchanted youths to evolve quickly into a call for active protests. In

response to the growing behemoth of the 99% organization AmpedStatus.com released How

to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won, an article that outlined

the 99% movements intended method of operation. With that the 99% movement was

officially launched.

Originally these protests were aimed at very specific objectives outlined by DeGraw as a list

of demands. Firstly he called for an end to corporate financing of political campaigns and an

end to the lobbying racket, secondly he demanded that the Federal Reserve Bank and the too

big to fail banks be dismantled and for Ben Bernanke to step down as the Federal Reserve

Chairman. He also called for the RICO laws to be enforced against the organized criminal

class. Overall he blamed the GFC on a conspiracy between the worlds central banks to

dominate the greatest economies of the world and promised to carry out a relentless

campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.

OWS and the Arab Spring

Meanwhile, early in 2011 as rebellion broke out in Egypt AmpedStatus.com supported its

stance against the IMF, quickly connecting the 99% movement with the beginnings of the


3/8

Arab Spring that was about to sweep through North Africa and the Middle East. DeGraw

claims that the AmpedStatus.com website came under attack from unknown hackers

repeatedly at this time and OWS picked up its second major influence when the hacker group

known as Anonymous took over the webhosting of AmpedStatus.com and established a

designated social network for the 99% movement.

Anonymous were known for organizing coordinated attacks on corporate computer systems

and had been actively assisting the rebels in Egypt and Tunisia. From the time that 99% and

Anonymous joined forces the message of the movement began to change. In February 2011

AmpedStatus.com released what amounted to a political manifesto with the threatening

statement that If you think whats happening in Egypt wont happen within the United

States, youve been watching too much TV. The threatening tone and the Socialist leanings

of the group got the attention of the uber-right wing media like Glenn Beck who used the

connection to vilify the 99% movement as a socialist ploy to undermine American values.

Ironically Beck himself said almost exactly the same thing on his own television program but

from the other side of the political fence. The battle lines were drawn.

Through the Looking Glass

The 99% movements original seminal message of the evils of central banking and its

demands for the Federal Reserve to be dismantled already had it skirting the edge of the

world of popular conspiracy theorists like David Icke and G. Edward Griffin. With the

broadening of its membership the group began to also widen the scope of its protests. It

seemed that the 99% were disenchanted with more than just the fiscal policies of its

government and environmental issues, haranguing attacks on pharmaceutical companies and

a bevy of other fringe and new age causes began to jump on board. Many of the newly

joined-up 99 Percenters were largely ignorant of economics and so the message began to get

watered down.

While DeGraw had originally called for precise goals such as prosecuting specific executives

that were responsible for fraudulently representing shoddy mortgage bonds as AAA

investments the masses were now clamoring against capitalism in general. At the same time

Anonymous began calling for the US Day of Rage in an echo of the rallying call that was

being used by revolutionaries fighting in the Arab Spring. The 99% movement had a lot of

momentum by now but very little definite direction so this call for active protest met with an


4/8

enthusiastic response but when the protest eventually materialized in Liberty Park it was a

flop. Even so it did bring it into contact with a newly formed group called the New York City

General Assembly (NYCGA). This was a group that called itself a Peoples General

Assembly that had formed to protest against Mayor Michael Bloombergs budget cuts and the

new union was immediately fruitful.

The NYCGA added the political spirit and grassroots organization to what had been a

chaotic, spontaneous movement and the result was the OWS 99% movements plan to stage

an occupation of Wall St on September 17. This campaign was now the focus of a number of

protest groups and through DeGraws escalating public profile it gained more momentum

telling people who wanted to contribute that anything you can do to rebel against the system

of economic tyranny in a non-violent manner is welcome. The Anonymous-99% OWS

movement went on to describe itself at this time by issuing a statement saying; We are a

decentralized non-violent movement. If you are looking to contact one of our leaders, go to

the nearest mirror and peer deeply into it. It may take some time, but, eventually, one of our

leaders will appear with answers to all of your questions. By this time the original message,

and maybe even the intention of the movement had become buried in a plethora of conspiracy

theory driven causes ensuring that it was likely that 99% of the people that turned up to

occupy Wall St on September 17 wouldnt have a clue as to why they were there.

OWS vs The Tea Party

As the threatened occupation of New Yorks financial districts loomed, fuelled by an internet

savvy, social networking underground of activists, OWS became a political football as

Washington tried to see what sort of mileage they could get out of it. The anti-elitist

sentiments of OWS naturally put the movement into opposition with the GOP and their

support for Wall St even through the GFC but the controversial and semi-underground

radicalism of OWS was to extreme for the more middle of the road Liberals too but the

natural affinity of the Democrats with the libertine nature of much of the OWS message

ensured that by the time that the actual occupation began that Michael Bloomberg would

arrange for the protest to take place on private property at Zuccotti Park and was quoted as

saying, People have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make

sure they have locations to do it.


5/8

Such obvious support from a staunch lifelong Democrat as Bloomberg was almost a

declaration by the liberals that, while they werent sanctioning their opinions about Wall St,

they were supporting their First Amendment Rights to express them. Politically OWS has

been posited against the right wing Tea Party in a polarized way that ignores the fact that

70% of the occupiers are politically independent, and that this is probably because two thirds

of them are under 35 and have been long disenfranchised by the major parties and the two

party system itself. OWS offers them an alternative voice to say the things that they think that

the politicians should be saying.

On the other side of the social reform fence is the Tea Party with its grass roots organization

planted firmly in family values, patriotism that verges on xenophobia and Jesus. On the

surface it might seem that the two movements have common goals as they are both calling for

an end to the Federal Reserve Bank and its fiat money but under the surface the differences

couldnt be more different. Tea Partiers are uber-right wing and stand against many of the

issues that have been adopted by the umbrella of the 99% movement like gay marriage and

loosening immigration laws. It is almost as if the Tea Party want a return to some imagined

golden age of Americana whilst the 99% movement want to fundamentally alter the structure

of government for a future world. In fact the polarity has become so marked that Rick Perry

used a bad joke about OWS to gain favor with the Tea Party in the GOP pre-selections only

to have the whole thing blow up in his face when it was revealed that the source of his

information was a hoax. It seems that the OWS has claimed its first premium political scalp.

OWS in the Big Leagues

Prior to September 17 the 99% movement had been merely an exercise in shadowboxing but

when the occupiers arrived in Wall St that all changed. As OWS gathered momentum and

spread to other cities across the United States and around the world it became obvious that it

was becoming a force to be reckoned with. Although it may have begun as a decentralized

organization very soon it started to become more politicized as the supporters, and their

donations, began to accumulate.

By late October OWS was well under way but it seemed like the movement lacked a unified

direction. On October 23 OWS held a meeting to determine what its platform is going to be

and a laundry list of proposed demands was published on the OWS website that enumerated

24 issues that it was suggested that OWS should champion. Some of the suggestions were a


6/8

clear indication of the politically naivet of the OWS membership like banning the private

ownership of land and reducing the age of majority to 16. Other demands were almost self

contradictory; calling for universal health care and increased social security while banning

the debt limit and reducing taxes for the bulk of wage earners at the expense of the 1% who

are to be taxed at 90%, both spending untold amounts of money and ending the governments

income stream.

The socialist tenor of the demands continued with a repeat of the call to ban corporate

investment in political campaigns and for elections to be taxpayer funded while the

workforce is to be unionized and the working day reduced to 6 hours. There are a number of

other, more farfetched demands but the most interesting thing about the list is that the

original, seminal demand of the 99% movement made by DeGraw, that the Federal Reserve

and the big banks were to be dismantled, was completely gone. Obviously by this time the

OWS movement was suffering for its lack of firm leadership and was losing sight of its core

purpose. These developments led to OWS losing a lot of its intellectual credibility and with it

almost all of its political clout.

The End of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience

By 15 October on the so called Global Day of Action the occupiers had begun to feel pretty

comfortable, almost as if they were winning but as October progressed and OWS spread to

most major cities in the US it became apparent that the disruption wasnt going to be allowed

to go on forever. It is hard to believe that any of the organizers, especially the politically

savvy NYCGA, could have really believed that authorities would not act to remove protestors

at some point. It would also have been clear what methods those authorities would use. On 25

October OWS released a statement of solidarity from the protestors in the Arab Spring

movement in Cairo which carried the confronting message that It is not our desire to

participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when

they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. From that time on it had

to be fairly certain that the stage was set for confrontation and that the OWS was mobilizing

its forces to resist.

The first hints that authorities were prepared to end the occupations came from Chicago

where there were a few arrests as the police tried to disperse the protestors. Within days the

reaction had spread across the US and the violence of the resistance in Oakland became the


7/8

focus of the OWS online buzz. The colorful pictures of banner carrying, masked marchers

have been replaced by the battered and bloodied resistance of the occupiers and the online

hype has shifted away from attacking the central banks to discussing tactics for digging in

and defying police. As the movement has become more extreme and is more aligned with the

philosophies of the Arab Spring its direction is more and more being handed over to the

extremists that will stand up to authority. The aroma of socialism that was espoused in the

original intentions of the 99% movement has attracted a gamut of big brother conspiracy

theorists that are subverting the movement towards a general stance against all authority as

the protestors become less focused on who exactly is on the other team.

The Same Old New World

After a couple of weeks of recording the violence used by authorities everywhere to disperse

the occupations OWS and the 99% movement had lost some of their original shine. The

occupiers had become just another protest that had ended in bloody riots and the inevitable

property damage and destruction that comes with that. This of course encouraged the belief

that the establishment was threatened enough to hit back. All along DeGraw had asserted

that the GFC, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a host of other things were attacks by the

1% on the middle classes and the strong arm police tactics seemed, for many in OWS, to

confirm these views.

The movement needed to restate its goals, to reconnect to its original message and so they

began November with a post on their website entitled A New World. Under a photo of an

attractive young woman holding a placard saying The Beginning is Near is a short diatribe

enumerating all of the popular support in New York and around the world for OWS. It states

that the 99% are the individuals and villages, the cities and peoples across the world who are

seeing each other on the far side of appeals and petition. It is the world we are becoming.

Semi-coherent statements like this sum up the intellectual position of the group as a whole as

it drifts towards a libertine, Noam Chomsky inspired, humanist movement that cant decide

between becoming socialists or anarchists. As such they are also drifting away from

representing anything like 99% of Americans, or the rest of the world for that matter.

Of course this has engendered new conspiracy theories that the top end of Wall St and the

government had infiltrated OWS, subverting their original message and muddying their

purpose to stave off the frontal attack that the 99% movement made on the big banks and


8/8

corporate sponsorship of the political parties. It could be said that the authorities have

allowed them to have their occupation for just long enough, playing the occupiers like a fish

on the line, until they lost their focus in all of the day to day organizational issues that a huge

protest generates and forgot what it was that they were demanding or protesting against in the

first place. Perhaps the corporate overlords in Wall St had specifically financed the police

crackdown with J.P. Morgans money and maybe social media site did have their content

filtered for OWS material but in the end it is still up to the 99% movement and the people

that run it to determine what their platform really is.

With the mainstream media now declaring OWS as an old story, and in a Market Watch

article entitled Occupy Wall St is 99% Dead, Jon Friedman points out that OWS is beginning

to be corrupted by the very same corporate America that it began its life rallying against with

rumors of a television series centered on OWS protestors. There have also been moves to

trademark Occupy Wall Street and recent reports that OWS had accumulated half a million

dollars in donated funds with more coming in every day. 99% is becoming a capitalist

venture in itself. In his article Friedman also points out that the once curious media has

moved on and that in a busy 24/7 news cycle that they were always going to have a definite

shelf life. The article makes a poignant point, quoting 60s anti-Vietnam activist, folk singer

Joan Baez as saying, Ill be convinced when it develops a real direction... So far its hard to

tell.

Sources

Wikipedia

http://occupywallst.org/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-usa-wallstreet-protests-money-

idUSTRE7A12DY20111102http://www.marketwatch.com/story/occupy-wall-street-is-99-dead-2011-11-02

http://ampedstatus.com/

http://www.newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/9002/Top-10-Occupy-Wall-Street-Conspiracy-Theories.aspx
http://occupywallst.org/http://occupywallst.org/http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-usa-wallstreet-protests-money-idUSTRE7A12DY20111102http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-usa-wallstreet-protests-money-idUSTRE7A12DY20111102http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-usa-wallstreet-protests-money-idUSTRE7A12DY20111102http://www.marketwatch.com/story/occupy-wall-street-is-99-dead-2011-11-02http://www.marketwatch.com/story/occupy-wall-street-is-99-dead-2011-11-02http://ampedstatus.com/http://ampedstatus.com/http://www.newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/9002/Top-10-Occupy-Wall-Street-Conspiracy-Theories.aspxhttp://www.newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/9002/Top-10-Occupy-Wall-Street-Conspiracy-Theories.aspxhttp://www.newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/9002/Top-10-Occupy-Wall-Street-Conspiracy-Theories.aspxhttp://www.newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/9002/Top-10-Occupy-Wall-Street-Conspiracy-Theories.aspxhttp://www.newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/9002/Top-10-Occupy-Wall-Street-Conspiracy-Theories.aspxhttp://ampedstatus.com/http://www.marketwatch.com/story/occupy-wall-street-is-99-dead-2011-11-02http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-usa-wallstreet-protests-money-idUSTRE7A12DY20111102http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-usa-wallstreet-protests-money-idUSTRE7A12DY20111102http://occupywallst.org/

the 99% occupy no man’s land

Documents