For the past week I’ve been following an activist movement with the very heady goal of trying to occupy Wall Street (a la Tahrir square in Cairo) on September 17 to demand – well, something that treats regular folks better.
Their model for action is a “general assembly,” a form of extreme democracy based on total consensus. Sitting through two of their meetings now has been agonizing.
The group – mostly somewhat-radical students, with a smattering of professors and older activists – first gathered at a protest/meetup at the Wall Street bull statue on August 2. After fighting with and then breaking away from the old-timer activists (“down with capitalism,” etc), the group sat in a circle on the hard pavement and settled in for a long talk.
The initiative was taken by Georgia – a very feisty Greek woman with experience in the country-shaking rallies in her verging-on-bankruptcy home country. She pushed the model of a “general assembly” – a leaderless (though moderated) discussion in which anyone could propose anything.
The assembly votes on every proposal, but a majority is not enough. Even the losers have to cede their opposition and agree to go with the majority vote before anything can proceed.
It’s a beautiful model of equal representation – and a nightmare to implement. In the first meeting, which lasted about two hours, a full hour was spent – in fits and starts – simply deciding where the next meeting would be.
In the second meeting, last night, the group spent about an hour trying to agree on a setup. Those who spoke mostly made min-speeches on their opposition to the financial/economic/governmental status quo, but no one could decide on a demand or even suggestions of demands for the rally.
Vague speeches continued even in the practical planning phase. And the best suggestion for concrete action was to establish a committee to work on it. All this while the five-weeks before the “planned” massive protest keep melting away.
But is the snail’s pace a guarantee of failure? Maybe not. General assemblies have been the model for the massive protests in Europe, which have achieved their ambitious goals.
Are the Europeans better at this, or do these movements simply start slowly and then snowball? We’ll find out on September 17.
