Activism & Theory: My Conflict With #OccupyWallStreet

This Friday, I decided to head over to Zuccotti Park to see for myself what has become the Occupy Wall Street movement. Despite being a passionate life-long feminist, I found myself there and feeling very out of character—I felt no desire to join, no righteous fury pulsing through me. I wasn’t moved in the slightest. In fact, I actually scoffed at a few young activists sipping wine coolers out of paper bags.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked myself. Even my friends seemed perplexed. Whether it’s activism or direct service, I have always felt it my place to make a difference in the world. I live for justice. I would not be able to function if I was not trying to live every day like it really mattered. I really needed to get to the bottom of my hang-ups and understand where I fit into this rapidly expanding movement.

Upon first thought, like many, I was frustrated that there seemed to be no strategy driving a specific, common goal. As someone with experience in community leadership and having worked in public affairs, I know how much strategy matters. Upon voicing this opinion to a respected friend and colleague, it was swiftly pointed out that my experience itself makes me what she cleverly calls an “establishment feminist”: someone who works for the machine, someone who comes from a place of privilege that makes them an outsider in many ways.

Then, my criticism was crushed further by none other than my 82-year-old Grandmother. During a conversation with her this morning about recent activist happenings (yeah, she’s badass), she gently reminded me that despite years of my mom telling me “it’s not who started it, it’s who ends it”, when it comes to injustice, it is the duty of the perpetrators to fix it, not the oppressed. Touché, Grandma!

After realizing that my criticism of goals and strategy was unfounded, I kept thinking and reading. The consensus model the organizers are using is pretty damn radical (and cool). Also, there is strategy, even if it’s not the obvious, tried-and-true kind that comes from the big-name backers like unions and big old national organizations.

Then, out of nowhere, it clicked. This is a movement about economic justice.  It’s about the “99 %” of Americans who are now living with the reality that the middle class is shrinking and the American Dream has died because of the “greed and corruption of the wealthiest 1%”.

Wait a second–that whole “American Dream” bullshit again? That fantasy has never been available to so many of us well before the recession. Gender and race pay gaps have existed for as long as we have actually been receiving wages for our work. This is not an issue that magically popped up; it is part of a complex continuum. Because of this, it feels much more comfortable to identify with the complexity of who I am, rather than with the over-simplified fact that I am not part of the wealthiest 1% of our nation.

Finally, I could articulate my real inner conflict: on one hand, it makes us stronger to be a united 99%. On the other, it seems to silence the injustices lived out by so many people within the 99% well before the recession began. People working for justice have an obligation to see where our experiences intersect while understanding the complexity of power and privilege based on a variety of socially constructed groups. In fact, many brilliant feminists have surmised that the inability to understand intersections actually kills movements and hampers meaningful, lasting change.

Despite my inner conflict, I know that I will probably never find resolve with a movement that I am not participating in. In fact, conflict may be all the more reason to get involved. Also, I know a lot of how I feel comes from theory and not raw indignation. But, theory and activism need each other, and we need to continue to integrate them.

So, I’m curious: what do you think? As a feminist, have you had conflicts with Occupy Wall Street? Do you feel connected to the movement? What can we do to sync theory up with practice to create lasting change?