SALON

Tuesday, Nov 22, 2011 1:00 AM UTC

All-American occupation movements

It turns out we've been making history like this for a long time SLIDE SHOW

By

Topics: Occupy Wall Street, ,

All-American occupation movements

View the slide show

When squaring off against unaccountable and abusive power, sometimes the only course of action is to plunk down and fix a stake. The history of social protest in the United States is the history of people taking a stand, but in the last century this has increasingly meant taking a seat. In response to injustice, Americans have learned to gather their fellow aggrieved, park somewhere symbolic, and make their lack of movement the message. Dissent transformed into a fixed community quickly becomes an object of orbit instead of a subject. It commands attention instead of pleading for it. As Occupy Wall Street has shown, occupation protests are young planets that shift gravity.

OWS is the latest in a long American tradition of encampments and sit-downs. These actions often act as harbingers of larger movements and historic shifts in public opinion. Jacob Coxey’s army of homeless migrants may not have succeeded in occupying Washington in 1894, but his effort marks the beginning of a period of militant labor agitation and public anger over growing wealth inequality. OWS could one day appear to future generations as a similar bookend. Already the literal “occupation” part of OWS is coming to an end, and giving way to something bigger than any city park or bullet-point list of financial industry reforms. The dispersed tent-towns of New York and Oakland, Calif., expanded and sharpened the focus on this country’s ever more disgusting disparity between the rich and the rest, and out of them have grown calls to occupy the food system and occupy the rooftops.

The following gallery is an overview of the American occupation protest tradition.

View the slide show

Alexander Zaitchik is a journalist living in Brooklyn. More Alexander Zaitchik.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

    View the slide show

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

    View the slide show

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

    View the slide show

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

    View the slide show

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

    View the slide show

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

    View the slide show

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

    View the slide show

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

    View the slide show

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

    View the slide show

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

    View the slide show

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 18 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Who is "Company Doe"? Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret
42 points43 points | 1 comment
vote
"Slave descendants seek equal rights from Cherokee Nation": long, detailed narrative of legal and historical complications in red-white-black relations
29 points30 points | 1 comment
vote
Who is "Company Doe"? Corporations accused of wrongdoing win battle to keep identities secret
7 points8 points | comment
vote
Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic shows the famously flamboyant entertainer as a person, not a stereotype
6 points7 points | comment
vote
Experts: Fox News spying scandal a game-changer - I think that crackdown is ideologically driven and I think it’s hard to come to a different conclusion given the vigor with which this justice department has gone after people. So I think it is about a method of control that is badly misplaced.
4 points5 points | 6 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations