We Were a Revolution': What Became of Occupy Wall Street

Exactly ten years ago, the messages of 'Occupy Wall Street' and its criticism of the financial system and social inequality went around the world. What has become of it?

People march through the streets with backpacks, US flags and placards. 'People Power,' they shout, and 'Occupy Wall Street.' They stop in front of the bronze bull, which is behind a barrier and is already being guarded by police officers. For the protesters, it is the symbol of capitalism, of the power of banks and money over people, of the inequality between the one percent of the wealthy and the rest of the population. 'We are the 99 percent,' some have written on their posters. 'We need an economy for the people and by the people,' says another.

What began on that day in September exactly ten years ago as a protest by almost a thousand people in New York developed over the next few months into one of the largest protest movements in the USA, which made it to London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna and in Total fueled over 700 demonstrations. 'Occupy Wall Street' was a critique of the financial system and social inequality, the messages of which quickly spread across the world with the help of social media. But as quickly as the movement arose, it seemed to disappear again. Two months after they began, the police broke up the gatherings. While Occupy soon became a nostalgic memory for many participants, for some it lives on to this day.

Such as for Marisa Holmes, who describes herself as an anarchist and anti-capitalist and helped organize the protests at the time. 'After the financial crisis and the demonstrations in the Middle East, it was clear to me that there had to be protests here, too, to take action against the country's banks and elites,' says the 35-year-old, who works as a communication scientist and filmmaker in New York , to DEFAULT. The economic recession that followed the financial crisis had alienated thousands of young people like her at the time.

Like many others, Holmes became aware of the burgeoning movement in July 2011 through an appeal by Adbusters, a Canadian magazine known for its provocative and dissident stance. 'Are you ready for a Tahrir moment? Flow into lower Manhattan on September 17, build tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street,' it said, referring to the Arab Spring protests that had taken place a few months earlier.

A little later, the hacker group Anonymous picked up the message and spread it to different groups on the Internet. The movement soon found support from the prominent economist Joseph Stiglitz and the anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber, who had previously helped to define the distinction between the wealthy one percent of the population and the rest.

On September 17, 2011, a thousand people protested for the first time in Zuccotti Park, a small square between Wall Street and 'Ground Zero', the site of the former World Trade Center. 'There were a lot of different people coming from all over the place, not just young, white students, as is often assumed,' says Holmes. Together with 200 other people, she then camped in the park overnight and turned the protests into a stationary gathering. 'For me, the movement became my life. I was there day and night, looking out for police checks, organizing discussions and cooking services.'

Decisions should be made through public debate and general consensus among participants. 'That guaranteed Occupy stayed open and created trust between the protesters,' says Holmes. Many saw it differently. 'There was great tension within the movement from the start,' says sociologist Heather Hurwitz, who researches social movements at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and was an activist close to Occupy, to STANDARD. Women and people with non-white skin were not really included - 'a big omission,' says Hurwitz.

Occupy also found its way into Austria, albeit on a much smaller scale. 'Back then we organized a rally on Stephansplatz. Not many came,' says Philipp Janyr, one of the co-organizers at the time, to the STANDARD. The movement was designed to allow all opinions. 'That also meant that any nonsense could be presented.' The movement was very quickly infiltrated by conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis.

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In fact, the movement lost credibility and persuasiveness after the WU professor Franz Hörmann was invited, who had come under criticism for 'dubious statements about the Holocaust,' as the WU put it soon afterwards, and Hörmann was temporarily suspended from work.

Occupy did not make any concrete demands in the USA either. Instead, a variety of debates arose in which not only the rich one percent, but also the financial industry, the high tuition fees and the tax system were criticized. 'The movement was above demands. We weren't a reform movement, we were a revolution,' says Holmes.

In mid-November 2011, the police managed to break up the gathering in Zuccotti Park after bad weather had increasingly weighed on the activists' will to protest. Until 2013 there were always individual protests connected with Occupy. Nevertheless, for many it was the premature end of the movement.

According to many observers, Occupy was not able to achieve much in concrete terms. After the movement, the financial industry remained as it had been before, and there was hardly any change in social inequality in the USA. Otherwise, Occupy did not lead to concrete political or economic changes. So what's left?

'Occuppy has shown that it is possible for citizens to network in a very unbureaucratic manner,' says Holmes. The way of communicating and protesting via social media later promoted movements such as Black Lives Matter and MeToo. Hurwitz sees it differently: 'What we should learn from Occupy is how important it is to have leaders in a movement who also represent the voice of often disadvantaged groups. A leaderless movement like Occupy does not automatically lead to inclusion.'

Hurwitz agrees with Holmes that Occupy helped launch many other forms of activism in the years that followed. Many activists later joined the Black Lives Matter rallies. At the political level, Occupy paved the way for people like Bernie Sanders, and many activists organized an unofficial campaign for Sanders at the time.

The general message of social inequality has also reached the mainstream through Occupy. In addition, a number of smaller offshoot organizations emerged from Occupy, some of which are still committed to lower tuition fees, climate protection or more banking regulation.

'The fact that there is extreme inequality between the super-rich and the rest of the population has become a general awareness,' says Janyr. In that regard, Occupy won. 'Where we lost is that to this day nothing has changed.'

Holmes remains confident that the movement will live on. 'I know a lot of people who are now dealing with issues that they took with them from Occupy in some way,' she says. 'One way or another, we're still fighting to this day.'