Worn plastic tents and hand-painted banners on ripped slabs of cardboard dominate the scene. Enthusiastic protesters blend in with the homeless, who camp on benches in the square—not to fight the system but because they have nowhere else to go. A group of five or six long-haired, flanneled protesters perform yoga next to a crowd of people listening intently to a teach-in on the civil rights movement.

Tourists meander through the square conspicuously, politely asking protesters if they could join them to pose for a picture. People wander around to look at the signs, assess the food tent and gaze with a mix of incredulity and admiration at these freedom fighters, or, more accurately, the ragged, sleep-deprived faithful.

Some of the college students in McPherson Square sleep in the tents with the protesters on weekends, only to return to classes and daily lives at universities. A few admitted that they already had jobs lined up after graduation. Since the movement is often portrayed by the media as a conglomeration of personal reactions to a sluggish economy, it is puzzling that students who are largely unaffected by high unemployment and its consequences choose to participate.

“It’s about solidarity,” one responded. “Just because we have jobs and career prospects doesn’t mean we should forget the people who have been left behind by the system.”

“The system’s fucked up,” another added, noting that it clearly doesn’t take a layoff to see that.

Youth aren’t necessarily hitting the streets advocating self-interest. Protesters are grasping for control over the future of the economy to level the playing field for the next generation.

AU professor and social movement expert Cathy Schneider is excited by the prospect of a powerful youth movement in America. However, getting people out on the streets is only the first step. In terms of sustaining the movement and actually beginning to change the system, she explained, a movement needs to have both a visible and structural presence. In other words, activists must not only work to get their message out, they must also have a forum in which to spread it.

Occupy Wall Street has a visible presence in national media, but Dr. Schneider would advise the movement to create a structural presence by identifying candidates who are likely to support and implement the goals of their movement. Even if they choose not to become a political party, which would be ineffectual in our strictly bipartisan system, movements need to stay engaged in the political scene to enact change. She recommends studying the Tea Party’s example: with candidates who supported their platform, they were able to influence the national political discourse. “Let’s see if we can occupy the Democratic party,” Schneider says.

Campus activism follows some of these principles of social movements. Student Activities lists 194 student groups and organizations online. Most universities nationwide brand themselves similarly—if we don’t have a niche for you, you can create your own! Jump through these bureaucratic hoops and submit enough signatures, and you can join the ranks of the Student Activities database.

Student leaders who are trying to build a revolution—not just a résumé—should apply the same strategies that Dr. Schneider suggests. Movements at the university level also require visual and structural strategies. Many clubs on high school and college campuses are focused on awareness. Yet awareness is only half the battle.

“It’s important on a university for people to become aware,” Dr. Schneider explains. “But if you want to have an impact, you need to have a clear policy of what you want people to do.”

AU purports to cherish political activism. It is a part of AU’s institutional identity. On the other hand, we are not taking to the streets en masse. Most people see the occupiers, and silently agree that the system is “fucked up,” but we’d rather not join them. We’d prefer a warm shower and a comfortable bed to a thin tarp blowing in the wind as winter encroaches on Washington. Awareness groups populate the quad every day, shouting about donating a few pennies to victims of famine or a flood, but we’re just on our way to class.

Perhaps the first system that needs to be changed is the mindset of our local campus communities. The “A New AU” campaign, while not directly linked to the Occupy protests, addresses essentially the same issue of structural inequality. The campaign calls for increased decision-making powers for students to hold university administration more accountable to the needs of the student body.

“The basic thing is,” one movement leader explains. “We are students. We are the clientele, the customers of the university. We attend it, we are the ones that it should be catering to, and right now, that’s not happening.”

Here is where the A New AU campaign diverges from the Occupy Movement: victimization at the hands of corporate greed is not a choice. Enrolling and paying tuition at a private university is very much a choice. That is not to say that students should not mobilize against unjust practices because they have already signed a check to the institution, only that the institution is not designed to be a democracy. Ideally, students should have a voice in the policies that affect them and the ways their money is spent. Student activists have this power to make changes in university politics that benefit the entire community.

Student leaders on campus and student leaders who are occupying Wall Street may have admirable, well-directed ideals that are easy for the public to support, but they face a serious gap between support and commitment. Campus activism has been reduced to brainstorming sessions and events that demonstrate excellent leadership and initiative on an application, but fail to demonstrate enough passion in the real world to create real change.

Illustration by Max Gibbons

We can no longer argue the fact that the Occupy Wall Street movement has arrived.  This past weekend marked its largest efforts yet, not only with a massive march to Times Squares but also with global protests echoing the message first voiced at Zuccotti Park. It seems that the nation agrees with that message against corporate greed and widespread structural inequality. A recent Time Magazine poll discovered that 54% of Americans have a favorable impression of the Occupy Wall Street protests, while only 23% percent have a negative impression. Yet as the movement escalates and encompasses more and more American cities, one wonders what role it might play in the current political conversation, and especially ahead of the upcoming 2012 elections.

Many have come to classify the Occupy movement as the liberal version of the Tea Party, a principled conservative movement which arose out of a general disgust with the governmental (or Congressional) betrayal of certain essential values like small government and non-interventionism.  In that manner Occupy Wall Street is the principled liberal movement, arising out of disgust with corporate welfare and greed and a general frustration over the unfair and unjust distribution of wealth and the stalled economy.  Following that logic, some suggest that as the Tea Party reenergized the Republican Party and organized its way to a 2010 Congressional victory, so might the Occupy Wall Street movement do the same for the Democratic Party.  To a certain extent Democrats seem to agree with this sentiment, and are trying to harness the energy of these protests. Recently, in fact, the Democratic National Campaign Committee circulated a petition asking 100,000 supporters to stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Democratic leaders have also come out in support of the movement. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she supported “the message to the establishment, whether it’s Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen.”  However, the idea of an eventual marriage between these protestors and the Democratic Party has been a contentious issue. Various profiles on the makeup of this movement reveal that the protestors at Zuccotti Park are not merely disgruntled liberals, but rather an assortment of people with different political interests brought together by a disdain of the status quo.  A status quo which they believe has not only been set by corporate money and interests but reinforced by our two party system.  Because of this Democrats have also tried to temper their support showing general approval but far from linking arms with protestors.

But while Democrats tiptoe around an unclear stance on the movement, its participants are much more resolute about maintaining the small democratic spirit of its processions, betrothed only to the issues of the people, and not of any one party.  Proof of this was seen two weeks ago at the Occupy Atlanta General Assembly in Woodruff Park when protestors rebuffed Congressman John Lewis’s attempt to speak to the crowd. Though the Congressman was later offered the opportunity to speak (he refused due to a time constraint), the deference that one would expect a longtime Democratic congressman and civil rights leader to be paid was not. It was up to the masses gathered there whether he would receive the stage and because some spoke up against the special treatment of any one figure, he was told to wait like everyone else.

YouTube: Occupy Atlanta Silences John Lewis

After a video clip of the event surfaced many commentators were quick to criticize the protestors’ disrespect. But the incident illustrates an important lesson in this continuing saga: the protestors do not care about the validation offered by mainstream Democratic approval or support.  Their goal, unlike that of the Tea Party, is not merely to gain a foothold within a relative party, but rather to collectively figure out ways to combat issues like corporate welfare and social inequality, as cumbersome and unattainable as those goals may be.

Photo by getdarwin via Flickr.

Protesters have occupied Zuccotti Park in New York City since September 17^th.  This protest, Occupy Wall Street, has since spread across the United States: from Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago to our own Washington, DC. It started in 2010, when Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck down campaign finance laws. It has since allowed corporations to make unlimited monetary donations to political campaign. The protestors are calling for a fundamental change in the role of money and corporate influence in the government and a change in the priorities of government from supporting corporate interests to supporting working people.

The Occupy Together movement, as the wave of protests has become known, operates without a formal hierarchy, unifying under the motto “we are the 99%”. It’s a direct reference to the distribution of wealth in the United States, in which 1% of American society controls approximately 35% of all the private wealth in America. Decisions are made by consensus on a local level in the individual occupations.

Public opinion has been largely favorable to the protestors, with 33% approving, 27% disapproving and 40% holding no view either way. Even more (79%) say they support the statement “The big banks got bailed out but the middle class got left behind.” Many groups have endorsed the protests, including the major labor unions, and many others, including President Obama, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have expressed their support for the protests.

Occupy Wall Street came to DC on October 1^st with the occupation of McPherson square downtown at 15^th and K streets NW. Since then it has continued, with ‘general assemblies’ twice a day and daily marches to protest various corporate lobbies and events, One of their main targets was the Washington Ideas forum attended by Vice President Biden, former Vice President Cheney, Treasury Secretary Geitner, as well as the CEOs of Bank of America and Exxon, among others.

Also happening this past week in DC: ‘Stop the Machine’, a protest organized since last June has been in Freedom Plaza since October 6^th. Primarily organized to protest the 10^th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, it has since picked up a lot of the rhetoric behind the Occupy Together Movement, such as the “we are the 99%” motto. This has led to a fair amount of confusion between the Stop the Machine protest and Occupy DC.

American University students have been active within both protests, and a large delegation of AU students, organized by the Community Action and Social Justice Coalition (CASJ) joined Occupy DC in the last few days. Junior Jimmy Fagan (CAS/SPA) expressed his reasoning behind participating in the protest.

“We have hope for change, real change, not some empty promise from some politician,” Fagan said.

Junior Chris Litchfield (SPA/CAS), President of AU Democrats and a member of the CASJ organizing collective, has been supportive of the protests and hopes more students get involved.

“This (protest) matters.  Grassroots democratic movements have shaped American public policy in the past ten years,” Litchfield said. “As students, we are invested in the future, and to see folks standing up against our current irresponsible economic practices is refreshing.”

Photos by Ethan Miller