Occupy SF Begins to Coalesce

Strategically located at the foot of Market Street near Justin Herman Plaza where thousands of commuters and tourists pass every day, the Occupy San Francisco camp has provided a valuable base of operations. With strong backing from labor unions, most of the City’s political establishment, and the general public, Occupy SF has successfully resisted efforts at the removal of its base camp. Given the political climate in San Francisco, Occupy SF has a special opportunity to maintain itself as a symbol of the Occupy movement.

During the last week, prompted by warnings from the Mayor that he will close down the camp unless it gets better organized, the Occupy SF community has finally begun to assert its power, affirm basic common sense over utopian fantasies, and overcome the irrational hyper-individualism that has undermined communal solidarity.

As a result, the community has made significant progress toward improving the camp and making it both safer and more presentable. In particular, several nights ago the camp finally executed peacefully what was reportedly its first eviction of a persistently troublesome individual who refused to respect the basic rights of fellow campers.

And Saturday, the community accepted the City-expedited removal of tents in grassy nooks on the east side of the camp, which the City had declared unsafe places to sleep due to the accumulation of human waste.

When some of those campers moved over to the main camp, community members, both campers and non-campers, insisted that they respect the City’s request to stay off the bocce ball courts and to maintain a two-foot space between tents, which enables passage when health emergencies emerge.

And prior to the weekly 3 pm march, one of the hardest working campers used the “people’s mic” to invite the gathering marchers to return to help clean up the camp. This honest acknowledgement of problems and the need for help from non-campers was encouraging.

Those who advocate notions characteristic of individualist anarchism might say that those actions prove that we can rely on spontaneous, autonomous actions by individuals and ad hoc groups to deal with problems. But I believe such actions will be more effective with the development of a clear, strong communal culture that affirms the power of the whole Occupy SF community to deal with individuals when they persistently engage in anti-social behavior.

As Tina Rosenberg articulated so well in Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World, peer pressure can be constructive. If and when Occupy SF as a community affirms a clear, strong commitment to the right of the General Assembly to operate as a governing body that has the legitimate right to self-govern by adopting and enforcing rules, Occupy SF will be better able to move forward effectively. Efforts to enforce rules would then be backed up by norms adopted by the whole community.

Efforts to improve the camp will be strengthened if the community more clearly rejects individualist anarchism, which reject all kinds of external control as exercised by “groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.”

As I discussed in “Democracy, Power, Structure, Policy, Rules, and Authority” and Occupy Turning Point, individualist anarchism claims that individuals are “sovereign” with the right to do whatever they want at all times. This utopian ideology has been reflected in common statements at Occupy SF like:

No one is in charge. If you don’t like something, do something about it and you are in charge.
We function without authority.
The General Assembly (GA) is not a governing body because it does not make rules that are enforced by relations of power.
The GA and the camp are different and the GA has no power over the camp.

The Occupy movement was not and is not based on anarchism, which holds all government to always be “undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful.”

A better grounded Occupy SF culture would enable the community to stay true to the original mission of the Occupy movement, as was expressed in the initial Adbusters call for action and “Principles of solidarity – working draft” adopted early on by the New York General Assembly and is clearly the overwhelming sentiment of the vast majority of participants in the Occupy Movement, including Occupy SF.

The impact of anarchism at Occupy SF is so strong I feel it is important for the community to examine whether anarchism, while a noble ideal in the abstract, is logical in the real world. It is my hope that, first of all, a close examination of anarchism will contribute to the continued evolution of a more logical Occupy SF culture by revealing that anarchism’s logic is false.

But given the reliance on consensus decision-making (whether the necessary threshold is 100% or 90%), a small minority of Occupy SF participants who express anarchist sentiments have been able to impede the community from accepting offers from the City to cooperate. And the influence of individualist anarchism has undermined the ability of the community to govern itself and enabled this minority to take Occupy SF in a direction that is contrary to the overall thrust of the Occupy movement.

For example, on November 16, the City gave Occupy SF a 24-hour notice to make significant improvements in the camp. That night the General Assembly discussed the City’s notice, which included a long list of needed improvements. The Occupy SF team that has been meeting with the City argued that we should consciously “try to meet their expectations as best we can” in order to protect the camp.

But one of the de facto leaders within Occupy SF took the floor many times, often repeating himself, to object to the overwhelming sentiment in favor of trying to improve the camp along the lines of the City’s notice. Twice he inflamed the situation by implicitly accusing unnamed others of being sheep-like when he declared, “We are acting like sheep.” Yet I did not observe anyone being docile, stupid, meek, or timid.

During the discussion he made statements like: “I’m not here to comply with regulations…. We don’t recognize the legitimacy of their regulations…. Every time we’ve been raided, it has galvanized the movement…. I’m fundamentally opposed to obeying or trying to comply (emphasis added).”

Fundamentally means “utterly … completely and without qualification.” For one to claim that one never complies with the wishes of another strikes me as a blatantly absurd, utopian absolute. It reminds me of another formulation I’ve heard during GA: “All cooperation is collaboration.” Absolute statements are almost always wrong.

I agree that we should discourage automatic, blind obedience. We should evaluate each rule and determine if it is legitimate. But to automatically, blindly, completely and without qualification reject the legitimacy of any and all government regulations strikes me as the mirror image of automatic, blind obedience.

Largely as a result of this one individual’s many interventions, the discussion dragged on for two hours, the GA never reached 100% consensus on how to respond to the City, and we discussed only one of the many issues raised by the City. At the very end, there was an informal agreement that individuals could take steps on their own to improve the camp, but this solution lacked the backing of the whole community.

Many of our problems could be minimized with the use of a 90% super-majority to make decisions (“modified consensus”) when the GA finds it impossible to reach 100% agreement (“full consensus”). And modified consensus was in effect on October 22 and thereafter at two GAs I attended, at least two of which I'm sure the facilitators announced that we could use modified consensus if necessary. There was no objection to this procedure at those two meetings. Presumably modified consensus was in effect for at least the next week.

Then on November 1, a controversy ensued and the result is that modified consensus was somehow thrown out the window, apparently without support from 90% or more of the participants at a GA.

The individual who initiated this controversy (the same one who disrupted the decision-making process on November 16) and prevailed with his argument has stated:

I would also like to remind everyone that we do not create binding resolutions at the GA. If the GA passes a proposal, and at a later date it no longer has adequate support to keep it in effect, it is no longer in effect. We do not "enforce" "regulations." Therefore it does not require 100% consensus or even a supermajority to "revoke" measures.

An example: If the GA appoints someone as a spokesperson or a liaison by consensus, it does NOT take full consensus to revoke that privilege at a later date. All it takes for that person to cease being a spokesperson/liaison is to lose consensus support. Consensus is a process of affirmation (emphasis added).

That logic, articulated by the manager of the Google Group that is responsible for planning meetings, is idiosyncratic. No wonder maintaining a central collection of minutes and policy decisions has not been a priority! In its entry on consensus, the wikipedia states:

In decision-making bodies that use formal consensus, the ability of individuals or small minorities to block agreement gives an enormous advantage to anyone who supports the existing state of affairs. This can mean that a specific state of affairs can continue to exist in an organization long after a majority of members would like it to change.

If Occupy SF agrees that one person can revoke prior decisions, it will face the opposite problem: no status quo. It will be a house built on constantly shifting sand.

I have great respect for social anarchism. Except for its total rejection of all government, I agree with most of its principles. But the form of anarchism that is widespread at Occupy SF, which strikes me as individualist anarchism, seems to me to be profoundly illogical and impractical. And its influence at Occupy SF hampers the organization’s effectiveness and drives people away.

So I hope the community will continue to mature and develop new ways to adopt and enforce regulations.