Big challenges ahead for Occupy movement

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San Francisco • The Occupy Wall Street movement is nearing a very real deadline for figuring out how to evolve into a long-lasting, influential social movement: winter.

Sub-freezing temperatures and snow will make it less attractive to camp in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, and California's rainy season will likely shoo away the less-than-hard-cores from encampments in Oakland and San Francisco.

Occupy spawned a worldwide movement through a provocative act — physically occupying public space — that gave voice to a widespread belief: The middle-class American dream is slipping away because of broken political and economic systems that favor the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Filmmaker Michael Moore told 1,000 protesters in Oakland on Friday that Occupy opponents are counting on their resolve to weaken when the rain and snow hit, "but weather is not going to stop us," Moore said.

But analysts say sympathizers will need different ways to express that frustration to maintain the movement's momentum. While images of police firing tear gas at protesters last week in Oakland drew international attention, many Americans remain queasy about storm-the-barricades dissent.

"If all that happens is those groups continue to try to occupy public space to express outrage, this dissipates relatively quickly," said Doug McAdam, a professor of sociology at Stanford and an expert on social movements. "Lots of movements start out as more expressions of outrage or frustration, but that does not sustain a movement."

While Occupy has changed the national conversation, McAdam said "two months do not a movement make."

As Occupy approaches a fork in the movement-building road, experts and veterans compared it to other social movements as it confronts its challenges.

Diversify tactics

"People are not going to invest time and energy to come to demonstrations that don't appear to be linked to specific outcomes," McAdam said.

That is changing. The liberal online hub MoveOn.org is among the groups promoting "Bank Transfer Day" this Saturday, Nov. 5, when people are being encouraged to transfer their funds from major financial institutions.

"There's so much energy now, frustration at Wall Street, and people looking for ways to get involved over and above Occupy," said Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, which is not affiliated with Occupy.

Members of Occupy Oakland have called for a student and city wide general strike on Wednesday.

"What do you do when winter comes? You go indoors. You occupy other stuff," said James Miller, a professor of politics at the New School for Social Research and the author of "Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago."

"The (occupation) tactic is extremely resilient," Miller said. "But its resilience is dependent on the willingness of ever-increasing numbers of ordinary people putting their bodies on the line."

Engage other supporters

The Occupy protests are structured as a leaderless, highly democratized body, where decisions are made by consensus. While that is attractive to those repelled by politics, it makes it a challenge to collaborate with more traditional organizations, like labor unions.

"The problem they face," Miller said, "is that the original instigators see this as a complete and total sellout to the original goal of changing the world."

"Who ends up taking control of this Occupy idea?" Miller said. "Will it be the anarchists who created it or will it be all these people who flocked to it? That's the drama."

Labor groups, some Democratic politicians and other liberal organizations are reaching out.

"It's rare for those groups to support more militant, more confrontational, oppositional activists," said Deborah Gould, an associate professor of sociology at UC Santa Cruz. "It suggests that what they're fighting for is mainstream."

Sharpen the message

Conservatives, in particular, have criticized the Occupy movement for having a hazy, scattered message. That's not unusual.

"Some movements are born with very specific goals," McAdam said. "But lots of them are as amorphous and broadly expressive as the Occupy protest."

The 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott was intended to be a one-day, localized action, McAdam said. But when many more people participated than even organizers expected, it carried forward, with specific goals in mind. It eventually lasted for 381 days.

"We typically look back at any of these movements as united top-down efforts," he said. "But the civil rights movement was a collection of local struggles."

Connect to suburbia

There have been Occupy protests in more than 1,000 cities. But for the movement to flourish, suburbia needs to embrace it on its own terms.

Those at the front of the modern women's movement in the 1960s, McAdam said, "were radical left feminists" who were "culturally anathema to middle-class suburban women."

But "they highlighted and made visible and salient a general concern about issues about gender discrimination. And lots of women could identify with that even if they weren't about to go out to some angry demonstration and throw bras in a trash can."

Manage the violence

Miller was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, which was at the forefront of youth-driven confrontational protest in the 1960s. After he demonstrated at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where students clashed violently with police, he watched TV coverage afterward and thought, "Wow, we won."

"Well, we didn't win. Because people watching TV see different things. A lot of conservatives sitting at home were appalled," Miller said. "It's why Republicans still keep referring back symbolically to the moment as a dangerous one. It's a two-edged sword."

After Ohio National Guard officers killed four unarmed Kent State student anti-Vietnam War demonstrators in 1970, "that was the end of the romance of running riot in the streets," Miller said.

Make it practical for youth

The do-it-yourself, locally organized, democratically run ethos of the Occupy movement appeals to the Millennial generation, who were born between 1982 and 2003.

"They do very much believe that the system has screwed them and left them with a ton of debt and no real way of making their way in the world," said Morley Winograd, co-author of "Millennial Momentum."

"The issue that's missing for some is more specific actions. More specific goals," Winograd said.

He pointed to cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York that are considering measures to divest from banks they consider complicit in the home foreclosure crisis.

Winograd likened it to the way that cities, states and universities divested themselves of investments in South Africa in the 1980s to protest the country's apartheid policies. "Millennials are interested in changing the world, but they do that by taking action, not by talking." —