Inside Occupy Wall Street's Information War: Whose Message Is It Anyway?

On Saturday, the marchers of Occupy Wall Street were cheered upon returning to Zuccotti Park, the economic justice movement’s place of indefinite residency in Manhattan’s financial district. Drums beat to a tribal soup of writhing, wet human bodies, drenched from hours of rainfall. A short time later, the mood shifted as news regarding the fate of those marchers who got held up by police on the Brooklyn Bridge trickled in.

“I have video of police officers dragging people across the street,” said one young woman to an organizer standing outside of the makeshift ‘media center.’ The small tent, cordoned off by plastic tape on all sides, is the occupation’s de facto media battlestation. From here, a fleet of plugs and power strips connect to dozens of laptops and electronic gadgets, all overloading their circuits in order to bring to light to the day’s events.

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A Bridge Too Near

The day’s events were alarming. During their march across the Brooklyn Bridge, over 700 protesters were arrested en-masse after they mistakenly entered the bridge’s vehicular roadway. A live stream online surfaced as chants of “the whole world is watching!” rang out, showing police officers pulling the trapped demonstrators out of the crowd, one by one, and detaining them with plastic zip ties before loading them onto prison buses brought in from Riker’s Island.

The New York Times was on the scene, and had reported that police had allowed marchers onto the roadway, then arrested them. But then, something happened. OWS’ ragtag media team sprang into action:

Clearly something was amiss. The police chiefs were quoted saying that they had given “repeated warnings” to anyone coming onto the bridge’s vehicular roadway. But many protesters, including some that I spoke to as they emerged from the pedestrian walkway in Brooklyn, claimed that the police weren’t stopping anyone from marching on the roadway. From the vantage point of the walkway, it looked like a trap.

Before long, the Times’ swapped lede-in started making the rounds on social media sites. The undeniable edge held by the occupiers in this information war was on full display. And just as people were beginning to ponder why the police would do such a thing, Occupy Wall Street’s media network pointed to a possible answer: A very timely $4.6 million donation from JP Morgan Chase.

Late Sunday, however, the police released video of a lone officer warning protesters not to enter the bridge roadway under threat of arrest, supporting earlier claims but perhaps also raising questions on the NYPD’s inability to divert the crowd onto the pedestrian path using physical barriers.

Entering Offline Mode

The movement’s high-tech media savvy, which flourishes in the absence of complacent mainstream news giants, is counter-pointed by a low-tech charm that hearkens back to the old social justice movements of the 1960s. Numerous “mic checks,” crowd-sourced amplifications which echo back fragmented speech in lieu of microphones, allow individual messages to be communicated across a vast sea of demonstrators — with varying degrees of effectiveness.

A complex system of hand gestures attempts to bring some semblance of order to the chaos, enabling organizers to form consensus on issues (as was utilized in assembling the group’s manifesto) or simply telling a speaker to hurry up and get to the point. Most importantly, these practices do not discriminate: Anyone with something to say, no matter how poignant or inane, can express themselves to large crowds at Occupy Wall Street’s basecamp in Zuccotti Park. There is, appropriately, no sense of authoritarian leadership or cliques here. Just people.

More and more people every day, in fact. Even with the ill-fated marches on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the protest gained record numbers this weekend. But even more impressive than quantity is the notable variety of people coming by to show support: Transit workers, airline pilots and now even U.S. Marines are filling the ranks of OWS’ increasingly populous demonstrations.

Revolution.xls

Consequently, the very same openness mentioned above, and the variety of ideas and causes it allows, has been the focal point of the movement’s most derisive criticism. The mainstream media’s near-ubiquitous subtext for coverage of the events suggests confusion over the group’s demands, and whether they even have coherent message. Of course, considering the nature of the establishment-serving institutions being criticized — big media, the banks and the government — this kind of heavy-handed, empty scorn is par for the course.

And it’s not as if anyone carefully observing these protests would have any doubt as to the central message: Wall Street and the moneyed interests behind its associated culture of casino-style profiteering have hijacked the welfare of the United States, claiming record profits off the backs of millions of suffering American taxpayers who are now on the brink of financial ruin. Sure, there is the inimitable vibe of unwashed new-age hippies and fish-worshipping eco-freaks mixed in. But these small offshoots in agenda, despite claims from mainstream media, are not so obtuse as to distract from the larger overall theme: 99 percent of the country is getting ripped off.

Even so, rarely throughout history has a social movement ever materialized as a codified list of demands. As Glenn Greenwald notes in his piece defending the fledgling movement, “Personally, I think there’s substantial value even in those protests that lack “exit goals” and “messaging strategies” and the rest of the platitudes from Power Point presentations by mid-level functionaries at corporate conferences. Some injustices simply need anger and dissent expressed for its own sake, to make clear that there are citizens who are aware of it and do not accept it.”

If it’s frustration and anger that the movement needs to survive, America has got plenty to spare. But still, it might not be a bad idea to wear a polo shirt while venting all that sociopolitical angst.