The children of the Summer of Love are awakening to the Winter of Discontent, writes BRID HIGGINS NI CHINNEIDEin San Francisco
A MONTH ago, on a crowded city bus in central San Francisco, a man got on and began to repeatedly shout out in a booming voice: “We are the 99 per cent! You are the 99 per cent!”
The other passengers shuffled awkwardly at the disturbance, but the slogan rang so true that nobody could object. Everyone on public transport is part of the 99 per cent.
Since it was first used at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York two months ago, this inclusive rallying cry has rung out right across the US. The repetitive chants of the protesters’ “human microphone” have echoed from state to state, reminding Americans of the colossal pay gap that exists in US society.
Californians were quick to adopt the movement and there has been fervent activism and police clashes in the San Francisco Bay area, particularly in Oakland, Berkeley and the San Francisco financial district.
There was some public scepticism about the now-dismantled encampment in San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza, which received largely negative coverage in the mainstream press and brought droves of homeless people from nearby poverty-stricken backstreets right into the heart of the financial district. But in the past week alone, thousands of San Franciscans and their neighbours around the bay have taken to the streets to show their dissatisfaction with the division of wealth in the US and there have been specific rallies resisting the eviction of homeowners from foreclosed properties.
The San Francisco area was once famous for its social activism. In the 1960s, the Freedom of Speech Movement began in nearby Berkeley university, the Black Panthers were founded in Oakland in 1966, and in the early 1970s the city played a leading role in the gay rights movement.
Since then, there has been something of a hiatus in widespread liberal activism. But now the children of the Summer of Love are awakening to the Winter of Discontent.
At a rally to shut down Oakland Port on Monday, veteran social activist Angela Davis suggested that Occupy Oakland had its roots in the city’s radical past.
“This protest is connected to the anti-racism protest because capitalism is racist,” she declared.
Davis said Occupy was an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist movement. In a phrase that echoed the 1960s sentiment “we shall overcome”, Davis said Occupy’s strength was that it could not be dismantled. “Like a phoenix, it rises,” she cried, to thundering applause.
Historian David Hollinger, a professor at Berkeley university, took part in the Freedom of Speech Movement in the same university in the mid-1960s, but he believes a comparison between Occupy and the movements of the 1960s offers little insight.
“The current movement is generated by the growing gap between the rich and the poor that is finally being articulated clearly by more activists and pundits . . . We are finally moving to confront economic inequality head-on, instead of using race and ethnicity as a proxy for economic inequality,” he says.
But, Hollinger adds, one thing is consistent: “The mission is to get the Democratic Party to align itself with the movement, just as in the ’60s it was important to get the Democrats to align themselves with civil rights and anti-war stuff.”
US president Barack Obama did tentatively align himself with the spirit of Occupy last week, saying at a public address in Osawatomie, Kansas, that the old Reagan-era system of “trickle-down” economics does not work and has never worked.
Unusually for a protest movement, Occupy blames corporate greed, and not the government, for economic inequality in the country. At the peaceful Port Shutdown demonstration in Oakland, there were no anti-government slogans or banners.
The protesters, who were marching on the port in support of the Longshoremen’s Union’s battle with the owners of the port terminal, were targeting what they called “Wall Street on the Water”.
They succeeded in shutting down port activity despite the fact that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union had not sanctioned the strike, which was held by protesters at several ports along the west coast.
The Occupiers were undeterred by what they described as vilifying reports that workers disapproved of the event and they collected money for truck drivers who had missed out on a day’s pay.
Bo Blixen, a former anti-nuclear activist who marched while playing a tin whistle, was delighted to be at the port on Monday. He said he had been inspired by the Occupy movement. “Everything is so down now, it’s time for us to pull ourselves up and do something,” he said. “This is the first time since the ’80s that I felt I needed to get back on the streets. It’s so exciting.”
As thousands marching from central Oakland converged on the port, it was clear that a steadfast spirit of activism had taken root in the San Francisco area once again.
Protesters young and old are already practised Occupiers – they know the slogans and the songs and they march with well-used banners and first-aid kits. They are prepared for the long haul.