It’s been more than seven months since the Occupy Wall Street movement began in New York’s Zucotti Park and gave us the class warfare rallying cry of “We are the 99%.” And while our nation’s downtown parks are mostly free of the squalid encampments, the movement is hoping to centralize its efforts online at its new site, Occupy.com. According to its creators Occupy.com “is a new media channel that will amplify the voices of Occupy.”
The site is being bankrolled by film producer Larry Taubman, who reportedly provided $130,000 in seed money for the project as well as kicking in “a large confidential sum” for the domain name Occupy.com. In addition to the ironic fact that Occupy.com is made possible by benefactors of the 1%, the site faces a number of challenges.
As a de-centralized movement which, during its heyday, relied on the General Assemblies (GAs) and “down twinkles” to make decisions, how can Occupy.com become the central hub for the movement? As the site’s About page explains, “There is no GA or Spokes Council overseeing us, but we are morally accountable to the movement as a whole.” Whatever that means.
The site’s other core challenge is how does a movement that began offline with a very aggressive physical element move to the real world? To be sure, the Occupation leveraged social media to let the world know about its marches, encampments, and run-ins with law enforcement, but in each case they were connected to action taking place offline.
It’s hard to tell what Occupy.com’s goal actually is. The main navigation for the site invites visitors to read, watch, see, listen, and engage, which suggests a news portal of sorts. Indeed, some observers have called Occupy.com a Huffington Post for the movement, but site visitors can also donate to the non-profit corporation running the site.
Occupy.com’s donation page has an oddly truthful admonition that I’ve never seen on a donation page before: “It is up to you to figure out where you want to give.” Well, OK.
Occupy.com is part of a broader network of Occupy-themed sites like Occupy.net (with whom Occupy.com shares user email addresses) and OccupyTogether.org (the site linked to from Occupy.com’s “Engage” navigation). As a result, Occupy.com is hindering its own success through its commitment to the “support us if you feel like it, support someone else if you don’t” attitude of the Occupiers’ approach to leadership.
With no commitment to actual leadership, coordinating efforts, or focused action, the Occupy Wall Street movement will fail to have the same level of political impact the Tea Party movement had in 2010 and, to some extent already, in 2012. For Democrats, this means all of the disadvantages of having a populist movement on their side with none of the benefits.
