Occupying Society: How the Movement Hashes Out Race, Class and Privilege in Real Time

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http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153151/occupying_society%3A_how_the_movement_hashes_out_race%2C_class_and_privilege_in_real_time/

Since Occupy Wall Street lost its stronghold in Manhattan's financial district last Tuesday, thanks to a long-threatened raid by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, discussion swirls about the fate of the movement -- especially in light of similar evictions of Occupy encampments in other cities.

But the loss of encampment space is about more than the movement's physical presence; it threatens the loss of the most compelling story, a hybrid of breaking news and reality TV show. This couldn't have been dreamed up by MTV, but the premise feels familiar: An organic, ad hoc society springs from encampment village, hashing out in real time tensions around class, race and competing priorities that have gripped the progressive movement for decades -- essentially the early seasons of "The Real World" for change agents and social activists. (The comparison wasn't lost on MTV producers, who created a special called True Life: I'm Occupying Wall Street, which aired earlier this month.)

Occasionally, the competing priorities of the movements made headlines, but the stories aired and published usually focused on tensions that arise when resistance to the state meets the need for police authority, as evidenced in ongoing battles over dealing with sexual assault in some encampments. Matters of diversity, homelessness and conversational direction draw less attention from media, but are fiercely debated in the Occupy communities -- and those conversations are instructive in the quest to create a new type of society.

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