Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street

by Todd Gitlin

“[A] much needed book…a compelling portrait of the Occupy movement…that capture[s] the spirit of the people involved, the crisis that gave Occupy birth, and the possibility of genuine change it represents.”—Eric Foner, author of The Fiery Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

The Occupy Wall Street movement arose out of a widespread desire of ordinary Americans to change a political system in which the moneyed “1%” of the nation controls the workings of the government. In Occupy Nation, social historian Todd Gitlin—a former leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who stood at the forefront of the birth of the New Left and the student protests of the 1960s and ’70s—offers a unique overview of one of the most rapidly growing yet misunderstood social revolutions in modern history. Occupy Nation is a concise and incisive look at the Occupy movement at its pivotal moment, as it weighs its unexpected power and grapples with its future mission.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Activism, Economics, School

222 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 10, 2012

About the author

Todd Gitlin was an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and not very private intellectual. He was professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Chris Faraone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most aficionados of progressive politics probably knew that Todd Gitlin would write a book on Occupy even before he did. The chair of the Columbia journalism PhD program has essentially prepped for such a project throughout his career. In addition to mastering the art of insider movement journalism with such age-defining works as The Sixties, he also authored the 1980 media critique The Whole World Is Watching, the '60s-era title of which became a go-to chant in the Occupy playbook. With Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street (It Books), Gitlin offers the most learned account yet of the spontaneous Stateside revolution that took place last fall. I asked him how he managed to write the new protest bible in a mere few months.

WHAT WERE YOUR INITIAL INTENTIONS UPON ARRIVING AT OCCUPY WALL STREET? I didn't have any grand intention when I first went down there. I just wanted to scope it out, because the reports I'd read didn't give me a feel for how substantial it was and what kind of patterns there were. The day I really learned something was the day of the first big march from Zuccotti Park to Foley Square. What was evident was the difference between the people who'd been camping out and the people who were coming along for the march. That was when I first saw a discrepancy between the demand-less people in the camp, and the demand-ful people who I'd come to call the outer movement.

WHEN DID YOU DECIDE THAT THIS WOULD BE A BOOK? Early on, in early October, I got contacted by the [New York]Times, who asked me to write an op-ed piece about how this was or wasn't like the Tea Party. . . . Several weeks after that, I happened to have lunch with my agent, and she asked me when I was going to write a book. I hadn't thought about it yet, but I'd written three or four pieces and had the feeling that I was in the groove. I didn't need to be taught the alphabet, but I knew enough to know that what I was looking at was a mammal and not a bird. At the same time, I didn't know enough to feel smug. I had a necessary balance of pre-knowledge about social movements and also a curiosity. I felt like the farmer who watched a volcano rise in his field. You can imagine his astonishment, even if he knows that the land was prone to volcanoes. I knew that something might materialize, but I had no idea how or when. The fact that it was surprising drove me to figure out what was distinctive about it.

HOW DIFFERENT WAS THE PROCESS OF WRITING THIS BOOK FROM THAT OF WRITING SOMETHING LIKE THE SIXTIES? I started writing the book in the middle of November, and I finished it in the middle of January. It was an exhilarating experience, and I have to say that I'd always wanted to do something like that. I wrote this in a fever — every day for two months. It was the single most thrilling writing experience that I've ever had. My deadline had been the end of January, but I beat it. In a way, this is book-writing as blogging. I have a different relationship with the Occupy movement than I had with the New Left, but I felt like I could get into the gestures, and the sort of smells and sounds. In this book, also, I change locations and voices. I'm trying to be fair to all of the parties, whether I agree or not, and I'm trying to plunge into all of the positions and then make my pontifical declarations of how I think things ought to be.

From my Boston Phoenix interview with Gitlin: http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/143...

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gitlin's introduction to Occupy is fantastic in that it captures the hopeful, angry, and yet utopian spirit of Occupy. He offers an unflinching account of the strengths and challenges that face the movement. A very useful introductory account in that Gitlin compares Occupy to other social movements that readers may be more familiar with and that are more recognizable in their structure and goals. Overall, a very useful book for teachers.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A JOURNALISM PROFESSOR LOOKS AT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT

Todd Gitlin is professor of journalism at Columbia University, and has also written books such as 'The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage,' 'The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left,' etc.

Of the "Occupiers," he observes, "Some, having campaigned for Barack Obama or John Edwards in 2008, might have been occupying Wall Street in 2009 had they not held back, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, or dazed by disappointment. Their patience has finally worn out..." (Pg. 27) He notes that "They were inspired, above all, by the so-called Arab Spring, the previous winter's gift to the global idea of popular power overthrowing dictators." (Pg. 71)

He admits, "in the third month of Occupy, life in the encampments grew more agitated and dangerous. Homeless people, untethered by political discipline, were conspicuous. Violence against women was reported." (Pg. 43) He also concedes, "what was truly impossible to find in the vast reaches of the Occupy movement---for more than three months---was a single demand, or a distinct package of them, or, indeed, any specific demands endorsed by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly ... the absence of demands was taken by mainstream media as a deficiency, a sign of unseriousness." (Pg. 109)

He suggests that "One test of the Occupy movement is whether it will continue to inspire questions like these: If I have a degree in physics or mathematics or, for that matter, economics, do I want to go to work for Goldman Sachs? Can I put my online knowhow to work organizing antieviction squads? If I am an architect, do I want to design buildings for the 1 percent?" (Pg. 229)

This is one of the best books about the Occupy movement.

[Aussiescribbler Aussiescribbler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was engaging in an on-line debate recently on the issue of gun control legislation. When I raised the issue of whether it might be possible to test would be gun owners to see if they had any feelings of hostility towards society, one woman pointed to the Occupy movement as a group of people she felt had hostile feelings towards society. She referred to them as "Occupy nutsies". Now I don't tend to pay all that much attention to current events. I operate on the principle that if something happens which is really important someone will tell me about it. But I did have some awareness of Occupy Wall Street and the other similar protests which sprang up in other places. I remember watching some YouTube videos from Fox News which expressed rather more about the desperation of that organisation and its perception (right or wrong) that its audience is both gullible and ignorant, than they did about what was clearly a heterogenous community not easily represented in a short television report.

I saw something hopeful in this movement - a group of people unwilling to remain invisible. We live in a society where corporate advertising is very visible and so are any number of celebrities, but when the economy fails the poor and the middle class many of the effects are hidden. Sure they appear in the statistics, but statistics are just numbers. It is part of the intrinsic injustice of a hierarchical system that those in a position of power can more easily make decisions which will harm others because, very often, they will never have to look those others in the face.

Alienation is the norm in our society. We are alienated from ourselves, as R.D. Laing pointed out in The Politics of Experience. But it also follows that we are alienated from each other. There was a time when we lived in closely-knit tribes, and later villages. Then there was a time where all families were extended families. Since then we have moved on to the nuclear family, and we are having trouble now even keeping that together. There are advantages in this for a growth-addicted economy. The more emotionally-empoverished our lives become because of alienation from each other the more we feel the need for material goods which will make us feel special. And the less we come together and share the more profitable wastage there is. If a group of people come together to feed themselves they can buy in bulk and have less spoiled food to throw away. And if people share each others books or DVDs or CDs, they save money but the companies putting them out make less. So for groups of people to assemble peacefully and interact with each other in public space goes beyond politics towards a healing of the spiritual cancer of alienation.

I decided to read this book to find out more about how the Occupy movement viewed itself. Todd Gitlin was a part of the Sixties counter-culture. He was a founding member and third president of Students for a Democratic Society. He gives an account of the Occupy movement which is both critical and inspirational. He gives an account of how the movement came about and introduces us to representative figures. But, perhaps the most valuable aspect of the book is the way in which he presents a vision of what makes the movement remarkable, what can come from it and the challenges which face it or any other movements which may grow from its seed. He also gives an impassioned warning about attacks on the First Amendment right to public assembly which reads : "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of Occupy books out there, and I haven't read any of them, so I have no idea how this compares to others. I will say I enjoyed this book and found it very informative. It's a little weird for me to read a book about something so recent, that's still happening. Usually books take much longer to get out, to me at least, and reading this as very of the moment was new for me. Not being part of the movement myself, I was a bit confused as to what's been going on and Occupy Nation provides a great foundation for understanding why it started and continues, as well as giving an inside look at how the movement functions, or doesn't, and the potential it has to change things, or not.

This isn't a romantic book, it very clearly defines, I think, the challenges the movement faces - both internal and external. Gitlin remains objective in portraying the movement. He clearly acknowledges the problems that exist that have motivated or inspired the Occupy movement, but reading the book I never got the impression that I was being preached to or anything like that. The focus stays on the movement: how it happened, why it happened, and where it might go, while providing a historical context for it and comparing it to other movements of the past.

My only criticisms are that the asides and explanations that break up a lot of the sentences tend to disrupt the flow and I found myself going back and rereading certain bits several times. Also, I bought the Kindle edition of this book (as it's only in ebook form right now), and I would have liked for there to have been in-text links to the notes at the end of the book.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Falls apart in 3rd section in my opinion, starts repeating itself. Better written until then. Like common reactions to OWS, seems to be equal parts enthusiasm and scorn, though he's not overtly raking them over the coals necessarily, instead bringing up the conflicts within movements that were certainly in force back when he was with the SDS, which in the words of Emmett Grogan seemed to be entirely full of itself, full of hierarchal big egos the likes of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, which have been the growing pains of all social movements that OWS didn't fully escape itself, although much more than SDS

[Graham Barrett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in college for a Social Movement class. I remember it was fine, sort of scratched the surface of the Occuoy movement. 10 years on when I write this review in 2023 and having not read/reread the book since I can't say how well it has aged.

[Randy Cauthen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good at situating OWS in the context of earlier protest movements.

[RK Byers · Rating 3 out of 5]

some hippie got hooked on a feeling. good writer.