Occupy Wall St., also known as the Occupy Movement or, simply, Occupy, began as a call to action from the anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters to “occupy” Wall St. on Sept. 17, 2011. What happened next is the subject of many books — most of which extol the movement — along with newspaper articles, television news segments, and public chatter from all sides of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, it is self-evident that the movement did not achieve its major, although mostly implicit, goals: to abolish corporate-elite governance and restore democracy for the so-called “99 percent.” [1] If this had been achieved, it would have been to the delight of millions of people in the United States and billions around the world, for there is no question that popular opinion was on the side of the movement — at least in the beginning.
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“Elections? You know what I mean, whoever wins it’s going to be the same problem.” – Bob Marley
Robert Nesta’s prophetic words, while spoken decades ago within Jamaica’s tumultuous political context, indeed speak relevant wisdom beyond their years, and we are wise today to take them to heart when considering our right to vote – or abstain – in the upcoming US elections. The ‘same problem’ in our case being that of an elite-led and money-motivated plutocratic, oligarchic and corporatocratic brand of representative democracy, which will not be overcome by the outcome of our nation’s depressingly narrow choice between bad and worse. Progressives, socialists, Occupy Wall Street-ers and other left-of-center-ers begrudgingly rally around the Obama team, not because they still believe in the same disillusioned hope for change that proved all too short-lived in 2008, but rather because they are horrified, as they should be, by the alternative of a GOP presidency. That electoral decision – the hands-tied choice between bad and god-awful – is not democracy in action, it will never bring forth the changes we seek, and it is not our only option. Enter: the argument for electoral voting abstention.
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The continued persistence of the Occupy movement is likely both heartening and challenging for readers of Unrest. Heartening because many of us, I presume, are sympathetic to the general goals of the movement and the nonviolent tactics generally used, but also challenging for scholars and practitioners in conflict resolution because it is not immediately clear what role practitioners could or should play in the conflict that the movement is addressing. Not every social or political interaction is a conflict and not all conflicts require the attention of a “conflict worker,” to borrow Johan Galtung’s term (1996, 266). In order to justify a conflict analysis and resolution response, we should be able to identify a unique and helpful contribution to be made. It is my contention here that conflict resolution, as currently thought and practiced, is ill-prepared for this kind of contribution.
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Welcome to Issue Six of Unrest Magazine.
In our brief existence as a publication, we’ve been amazed to witness how quickly the world can change. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street there is a renewed interest in mass movements and large scale social protest. Marx and Marcuse are back on reading lists and course syllabi. Liberal frameworks of intervention, democratization, and post-conflict peacebuilding are increasingly coming under scrutiny for their failure to address the contradictions inherent under global capitalism. Afghanistan and Iraq remain tragically mired in violence as a result. It is of little wonder that we find ourselves at this present juncture again confronted with the challenge of addressing what C. Wright Mills (1959) described in the Sociological Imagination as the intersection of biography and history, the collision of our private lives with social forces that appear beyond our control.
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Originally published in the February 2012 S-CAR Newsletter and at Reasons to Kill.
The advent of unexpected forms of social conflict challenges conflict analysts to answer two hard questions. The first is “What’s really going on here?” What are the underlying causes, current dynamics, likely outcomes, and possible options for resolving this conflict? The second is, “Why have these events surprised us?” Since we are conflict analysts, why didn’t we see this struggle coming and recommend creative ways to deal with it? The answers to these queries are closely related, but let’s start with the issue of surprise.
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Unrest Magazine and The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution hosted a conversation on the future of Occupy Wall St. and 2012 U.S. Presidential Elections. A video of the event can be accessed here at the bottom of the page: http://scar.gmu.edu/event/13406.
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