COMMENTARY

Bernie Sanders and the

Afterlives of Occupy Wall Street
Zaheer Baber

Bernie Sanders tapped into and

reactivated the hopes of the
Occupy Wall Street movement.
However, the tragedy of igniting
such hopes that were eventually
crushed brings to mind one of
Mark Twains many sardonic and
insightful quips: If voting made
any difference they wouldnt let
us do it.

Zaheer Baber (zaheer.baber@gmail.com)

teaches Sociology at the University of Toronto.

16

f the members of the mainstream

American media were shell-shocked
at the Bernie Sanders phenomenon,
they certainly did a reasonably competent job of hiding it for a long time. They
were of course not totally unaware of the
unprecedented social and political despair
as well as hope that Sanders simultaneously unleashed and tapped into during
his ultimately unsuccessful run for the
Democratic nomination. The initial narrative of ridiculing and dismissing Sanders
as the unhinged socialist presumably
peddling pie-in-the-sky-before-you-die
fantasies have, as a consequence of the
many impressive wins at the primaries,
eventually morphed into the constant
reminders that it is mathematically impossible for him to get the support of
regular delegates needed to clinch the
nomination. The entrenched elites of the
mainstream media were behaving quite
like the proverbial weather forecasters
who predictably blame the weather for
their inaccurate predictions.
While for many professional media
hacks are of course expected to produce
smokescreens, even a serious intellectual
such as Paul Krugman penned a hatchet
job of a rant on Sanders that did not
deviate from the dominant media narrative. In one of his regular columns for
the New York Times, he labelled Sanders
ideas as utterly unrealistic and suggested, as many other media commentators
did, that Sanders critiques of Hillary
Clinton would pave the way for Donald
Trump in the White House (Krugman
2016). Many social media commentators
and activistsunlike a majority of the
mainstream media operativeswere of
course shocked and his colleague in economics and Robert Reich, the former
Secretary of Labour under the Bill Clinton
administration, provided a convincing
counterpoint to such outlandish claims
(Reich 2016). Quite a few polls had indicated that if nominated, Sanders, due to

the unbelievable enthusiasm and hope he

had ignited, would have defeated Trump.
In the end of course, the entrenched
elites of the Democratic Party played a
not insignificant role in undermining
Sanders and unintentionally contributed to a Trump victory (Grim 2016; Gravis
Marketing 2016).
Legitimate Anger
No special analytical insight is required
to belabour the obvious point that
both Sanders and Trump succeeded in
generating and tapping into a groundswell of legitimate anger at the hopelessness generated by the dismal state
of the economy and politics in the United
States (US). For most voters, with the
exceptions of die-hard party loyalists
who have been part of the ossified Democratic establishment, Secretary Clinton
was the very embodiment of politics as
usual that was largely, if not exclusively,
responsible for the present desperate
situation. Just as the student and countercultural movements of the 1960s registered and channelled massive discontent
with the Vietnam War as well as the
general direction in which American
society appeared to be headed, the current crisis precipitated by horrendous
consequences of neo-liberal globalisation and the quite predictable and
continuing disasters in the wake of the
so-called war on terror fuelled both
the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall
Street movements.
Given the dismal state of the American
mass media with its relentless focus on
so-called reality shows and infotainment (Postman and Postman 2005), the
unexpected eruption of the Occupy Wall
Street movement in New York city in
September 2011 expectedly generated a
fair amount of sneers and ridicule. Just
get a job was the gratuitous advice
dispensed by a number of media outlets
for the campers in Zuccotti Park in New
York. Tapping into a widespread discontent with the grinding social inequality
and despair about the future, the Occupy
Wall Street movement, in the manner of
many other global civil society actors,
soon became a global phenomenon
(Gitlin 2012; Mitchell et al 2013; Baber
2015). Misgivings about the trajectory

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COMMENTARY

and consequences of global capitalism

had of course triggered concerted anticapitalist protests early on in Seattle as
well as Davos and indeed any other
location that hosted G7 or G20 meetings.
Over the past few years, much of Europe
has been more or less in constant turmoil due to anti-austerity protests and
the so-called Arab Spring signalled
growing social discontent at many levels
(Prashad 2012; Castells 2015). Its antecedents include the Zapatista movement in Mexico in 1994 that was a
response to North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) that represented a
significant aspect of the unfolding of
neo-liberal global capitalism (Johnston
and Laxer 2003).
In a prescient essay titled Occupy
Will Be Back published when the
Occupy Wall Street movement appeared
to be over, Chris Hedges contended that
given the pervasive structural inequality
that would only get worse with time, its
continual resurrection in many guises
was almost guaranteed (Hedges 2012).
The experiences, ideas and slogans generated by the Occupy had of course never
totally disappeared. They resonated with
and quite accurately represented the
state of affairs and it is hardly surprising
that pithy slogans such as the 1% versus
the 99% that informed and animated
the public sphere were rekindled, reactivated and dramatically amplified by
Sanders. What was so refreshing about
him was that unlike professional politicians and certainly quite in contrast to
Clinton, he has been consistent about his
position over the decades. More often
than not, it is a matter of politicians
connecting with and taking advantage
of the general mood of the public and
the electorate. However, in the case of
Sanders, it was quite the other way
arounda case of an ongoing social
movement and mood actually found a
real human being with the consistency
and integrity that is usually fatal for
professional politicians. Sanders, to use
the great German sociologist Max Webers
distinction, is someone who lives for
politics rather than most slick professional
politicians who live off politics (Weber
2007). Of course, the specific national
and global contexts are significant
Economic & Political Weekly

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decEMBER 24, 2016

elements that have contributed to the

tremendous success Sanders has had so
far. However, without Sanders utterly
transparent sincerity, integrity and consistency it is unlikely that the dire economic and social context would have
been enough to sustain his bid for the
Democratic nomination.
Given No Choice
Humans, as Marx pointed out in his
oft-quoted observation, make history,
but not under conditions of their own
choosing (Marx 1963). In the American
context, there have been other contenders
in the pastGeorge McGovern, Kucinich,
Howard Deanwho had similar ideas,
honesty and integrity, but the national
and global context, dire as it was, was
not quite the hopeless mess that is now.
Starting with Ronald Reagan, regardless
of whether a Democrat or Republican
occupied the White House, a number of
policies and initiatives accelerated the
slow but relentless and ongoing devastation of American society. These include
but are not limited to the so-called War
on Drugs that was partly aimed at the
social control of mostly young Black
Americans who having gained civil
rights after a prolonged struggle, found
themselves without stable employment as
at about the same time manufacturing
began to move out of the US in search
of cheaper and compliant labour. The
so-called War on Drugs contributed to
the dramatic expansion and eventual
privatisation of the prison system and in
Michelle Alexanders words, contributed
to the new Jim Crow or continuing
de facto segregation after formal civil
rights (Alexander 2012).
As Toni Morrison (1993) wrote in a
poignant piece titled On the Back of
Blacks, ironically, the civil rights movement facilitated the success of the relatively new immigrantsthe Greeks, the
Italians, the Hungarians, the Irish, the
Poles, etcwho until this time were
not considered White by the Protestant
establishment. The NAFTA, the dramatic
expansion of the military industrial
complex and its deployment in West
Asia in the two invasions of Iraq, the
horror that is now Libya and the continuing so-called War on Terror, the
vol lI no 52

Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, astronomical tuition fees contributing to

crushing student debt, the phlegmatic
initiatives for universal medicare heavily
beholden to the insurance industry and
without a public option have all contributed to generalised feelings of hopelessness and despair among most Americans.
The fact that voter turnouts in the
American presidential elections have
been one of the lowest in the world is
hardly surprising. Given the tremendous
influence corporate interests and big
moneylabelled as inverted totalitarianism by the eminent political theorist
Sheldon Wolin (2010)have had on the
entrenched machinery of both the political
parties, most citizens, especially the
youth have more or less given up on the
slickly packaged and orchestrated hybrid
of political theatre and a sporting event
enacted every four years. It is in this context that the eruption of Occupy Wall
Street sparked some hope as it galvanised the youth nationally and globally.
Although the movement itself appeared
to have been extinguished after a while,
the ideas and tactics that emerged from
it reinvigorated the public sphere and
the civil society, locally and globally
(Keane 2003; Baber 2008).
Sanders obviously tapped into and
radically reactivated the hopes and aspirations of Occupy. As he pointed out
on many occasions, his quest, unlike
most other political contenders, was never
about becoming the next President
as such. It was always more drawing in
the previously politically uninvolved
citizens into the political system and
hopefully influencing whoever happened to be at the helm of the administration. This hope may sound farfetched, but it is not unprecedented. As
Hedges (2016) has pointed out, many of
the major progressive initiatives, largely as a consequence of pressures emanating from concerted social activism,
came to fruition under the unlikely
administration of Nixon. These landmark initiatives include the Fair Labor
Standards Acts that dramatically raised
wages, the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration, the Federal
Mine Safety and Health Act, the Clean
17

COMMENTARY

Air Act and the Clean Water Act. He

also introduced a minimum tax on the
wealthy and argued for a guaranteed
minimum income for poor families under the Family Assistance Programmes.
During his administration, spending on
social service programme substantially
exceeded resources spent on the military
industrial complex. Even though Sanders
movement was eventually derailed by
the entrenched elites represented by the
Democratic National Committee, the
enthusiasm managed to rekindle the
potential of profoundly progressive consequences in the long run. The tragedy
of Sanders igniting such hopes that were
eventually crushed brings to mind one
of Mark Twains many sardonic and
insightful quips: If voting made any
difference they wouldnt let us do it.
Despite the facile and overconfident pronouncements by the same media commentators who got everything about
these elections so profoundly wrong,
the long-term consequences of Trump at
the helm are hard to gauge at this
pointeven though, as Pepe Escobar
(2016) points out, some overall plausible

possibilities can be sketched out in very

broad and patchy brushstrokes.
REFERENCES
Alexander, Michelle (2012): The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,
New York: New Press.
Baber, Zaheer (2008): A Name for a Stray Dog: Global
Civil Society, International Sociology, 23: 23745.
Baber, Z (2015): The Promise of Occupy, International Sociology, 30: 13440.
Barsamian, David (2011): Interview with Chris
Hedges, Progressive, 14 July, http://www.progressive.org/chris_hedges_interview.html,
viewed 10 May 2016.
Castells, Manuel (2015): Networks of Outrage and
Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Escobar, Pepe (2016): The Rules of the (Trump)
Game, Counterpunch, 6 December, http://www.
counterpunch.org/2016/12/06/the-rules-ofthe-trump-game/, viewed on 7 December 2016.
Gitlin, T (2012): Occupy Nation: The Roots, the
Spirit and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street,
New York: IT Books.
Gravis Marketing (2016): Current National Polling,
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/Gravis_
Sanders_Election_Poll.pdf, viewed on 7 November 2016.
Grim, Ryan (2016): New Pre-Election Poll Suggests
Bernie Sanders Could Have Trounced Donald
Trump, Huffington Post, 11 November, http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2016-electionpoll-bernie-sanders-trump_us_58260f7ee4b0c4b
63b0c6928, viewed on 7 November 2016.
Hedges, Chris (2012): Occupy Will Be Back,
Truthdig, 18 June, http://www.truthdig.com/

report/item/occupy_will_be_back_20120618,
viewed on 10 May 2016.
(2016): Revolution Is in the Air, Truthdig,
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item/revolution_is_in_the_air_20160416, viewed on 16 May 2016.
Johnston, Josee and Laxer G (2003): Solidarity in
the Age of Globalization: Lessons from the
Anti-MAI and Zapatista Struggles, Theory and
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Keane, John (2003): Global Civil Society? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krugman, Paul (2016): Sanders over the Edge,
New York Times, 8 April, http://www.nytimes.
com/2016/04/08/opinion/sanders-over-theedge.html, viewed on 10 May 2016.
Marx, Karl (1963): The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, New York: International Publishers.
Mitchell, W T, B E Harcourt and M Taussig (2013):
Occcupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morrison, Toni (1993): On the Back of Blacks,
Time, 2 December.
Postman, N and A Postman (2005): Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of
Show Business, New York: Penguin.
Prashad, Vijay (2012): Arab Spring, Libyan Winter,
Oakland: AK Press.
Reich, R (2016): Six Responses to Bernie Sanders
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Weber, Max (2007): Politics as a Vocation, From
Max Weber, 1919, translated and edited by Hans
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Wolin, Sheldon (2010): Democracy Incorporated:
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Press.

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