As Occupy Wall Street struggles to get back on its feet in New York after police stormed its Manhattan encampment, its two Washington offshoots are poised for their moment at the vanguard.
A bipartisan but deeply divided “supercommittee” on Capitol Hill is under the gun to meet a Wednesday deadline to outline US$1.2 trillion in public spending cuts over 10 years to rein in the galloping US deficit.
For the occupiers of Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square, it is a perfect opportunity to drive home their core demands for greater social equality and less corporate influence over US politics, organizers said on Friday.
Photo: AFP
“There’s going to be a series of protests” around the report, said Kevin Zeese of Occupy Washington DC in wind-swept Freedom Plaza, where protesters living in about 75 tents enjoy a postcard view of the Capitol down the avenue.
“We see the supercommittee as a really great opportunity to highlight the disconnect between the government and the people, and what the people want and what the government is doing,” the seasoned activist from Maryland said.
A few blocks away, under the oak trees of McPherson Square in the K Street lobbying district, Matt Patterson of Occupy DC said: “We definitely are going to be doing some action ... to make sure that the outcome benefits everyone.”
“Every lobbyist on K Street is working overtime here right now, trying to defend their turf” as the supercommittee finalizes its work, Patterson said from behind an “Ask An Occupier” desk he set up to engage passers-by.
Occupy DC popped up spontaneously on Oct. 1, about two weeks after Occupy Wall Street began, while its near-namesake grew out of an anti-war protest that started on Oct. 6 after several months of preparation.
However, unlike their counterparts in New York and elsewhere, both have largely avoided serious confrontations with the police, enabling them to deepen their respective roots and establish themselves as winter sets in.
Washington Mayor Vincent Gray signaled on Wednesday that both occupations — in public space that belongs to the National Park Service — will be tolerated, so long as they do not threaten public order.
Warming up for Wednesday, the Freedom Plaza occupiers earlier this month held their own al fresco “Occupied Supercommittee” meeting that was covered by the C-Span public affairs cable channel.
Out of that came a set of what Zeese called “evidence-based” job-creating proposals, including higher taxes on the rich, less military spending, free healthcare for all Americans and an end to “corporate welfare.”
Copies were hand-delivered on Thursday to all 12 supercomittee members, “but we don’t expect they will respond because the proposals we have in there are the complete opposite of where they want to go,” Zeese said.
At McPherson Square, occupiers are expanding their tool kit of tactics, after a march on a conservative fund-raising dinner on Nov. 4 resulted in scuffles with police and traffic incidents in which six people were hurt.
On Thursday, they joined their Freedom Plaza counterparts on a march led by the Service Employees International Union through the heart of the US capital that was carefully organized not to block rush-hour traffic or alienate commuters.
Patterson, a young Californian who has been at McPherson Square since day one, said his fellow occupiers favor smaller-scale actions — such as open-air teach-ins and, on Friday, telling “why do I occupy” stories to subway riders.
“I think what we’re trying to do is to adopt some of the older tactics that we think work,” he said, “and ditching the older tactics that maybe didn’t work, like getting arrested or being too confrontational unnecessarily.”
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