A day after New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg sent his own occupying force of policemen into Zuccotti Park to force protesters out, area radical Andrew Huckins followed up with the Advocate.
Asked whether the park was critical to the movement and if its loss would spell the demise of Occupy Wall Street, Huckins replied flatly, “That’s hogwash.”
He said that while they recognized the park’s symbolic significance, what was more important was having a space available where public dialog on difficult issues was welcome.
“I doubt we’ll see another week go by without another major occupation,” he said. “If you think about it, taking a park over is a relatively minor act. It’s not taking over an office building, interfering with people working, or stopping traffic. We were just using it to organize meetings. Losing the space was awful for the people who were really living there and don’t have homes to go to, but the occupation isn’t going to stop. It’s just going to change.”
Some media pundits have argued that it’s too early to tell whether OWS has made a difference, and only after the next elections will it be clear if they can effect change.
“Occupy Wall Street has already made a huge difference,” he continued. “It’s opened doors on topics that were supposed to be blacklisted. That’s huge. The conversations might even be about how wrong we are, but the fact that they’re happening is a quantum leap forward. Out of those conversations have come a whole host of initiatives across America that aren’t tied to whether the park’s full of tents or not. People have been radicalized through the process; they’re thinking about and feeling empowered to make change.
“It’s typical for the media to look at elections and policy changes as a barometer for success, but any framing that has to do with electoral politics, or policy change as the pinnacle of social change, is really misguided,” Huckins continued. “Those things aren’t really relevant to many of the people who are part of this movement. The system seems broken. It doesn’t matter who you elect if the systems of decisionmaking aren’t democratic. Policy changes aren’t important if the courts don’t function. Our movement’s radical. It’s working toward systemic change, not just tweaking what exists.”
This update companions and interview with Andrew Huckins.
