Occupy Wall Street activists march during a tour of foreclosed homes in the East New York neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York, Dec. 6, 2011
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Immediately afterward, a coiffed and powdered woman enters. She is from a foundation and would like to write a check. She is signed in, assigned a lanyard, and ushered to the finance working group that oversees the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the movement's coffers. None of that money is being spent by the folks in charge of the office. Everyone is a volunteer.
"One of the more gratifying things about my role here is that I get to hear from every group that comes into this space about what they are thinking long term," says Bockman. "The kitchen working group is a good example. It's not only about feeding people at actions — they're looking at the whole entire food system in New York City and working with local farmers, food purveyors trying to figure out how to source locally and change how we feed people in general."
"The office is for organizing," Karanja Gacuca, 38, says. An ethnic Kikuyu from Kenya, Gacuca was a regulatory-risk analyst for a major banking firm until he was laid off two months ago and joined the movement. "The movement is being run by its participants. There is no difference between the people here and the people at 60 Wall Street or Charlotte's Place or anywhere else where working groups meet." Those two locations also see meetings of working groups and are as vital to the movement, if not as fancy as the office.
Many people who identify with the movement fear that the workspace signals a death knell for OWS, that it's being co-opted. "Right now this is a sit-in with an office space," Michael Blas, an organizer from Occupy Philadelphia, argues in response to those concerns. "It's not a movement till we effect change, but that's the direction this is heading." "The media is writing obituaries," Gacuca says, "but the movement is clearly continuing."
Gacuca is talking about D12 that is, Dec. 12, the next nationally coordinated day of action for the movement. "After the clearing of the park, our targets have lowered their defenses and we expect to grow because of that." Taking place across more than 20 cities, the first nationally coordinated day of action, D6, on Dec. 6, saw somewhere between 500 to 1,000 protesters in its New York City action marching to draw attention to the "retaking" of a foreclosed home by homeless activists. The plans for D12 are still vague: a teach-in about Goldman Sachs involving puppets based on something from an article by Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi.
"The 99% is real," says Needham of the p.r. working group. "Most people you meet, once they understand what this is about, will support it. We're simply creating an environment to encourage and support people to have an impact in their neighborhood and the places, large or small, where they can effect change and letting them know that as long as they can reach a consensus with their General Assembly, we'll have their backs."