OCCUPY WALL STREET
New Labor Forum 21(2): 50-55, Spring 2012
Copyright © Joseph S. Murphy Institute, CUNY
ISSN: 1095-7960/12 print, DOI: 10.4179/NLF.212.0000008
By Michael A. McCarthy
out. To date, the Occupy movement on college
campuses remains a relatively loose network
that lacks a clear target for a national campaign.
Student activists are simultaneously
pursuing strategic objectives in two arenas:
off-campus student solidarity work with OWS
encampments, local labor movements, and poor
communities; and organizing on campuses to
fight back against tuition hikes and the general
privatization of colleges and universities. As the
student movement evolves, it will be critical to
build a national campaign by adopting tactics
that link students with struggles, both on and
off the campus, that focus on a coherent set
of targets.
OCCUPYING
HIGHER
EDUCATION
The Revival of the
Student Movement
College campuses around the country are
one place where organizing has been injected
with new energy. OWS invigorated a student
fightback against the growing power of big
business, both on and off the campuses—a
power that comes with budget cuts, tuition
increases, and attacks on working people. But
new organizing since late 2011, by public and
private university students alike, reintroduced
some of the basic questions that all emergent
movements face: “What do we want?” and “How
do we get it?” There appears to be a growing
consensus around the first question—students
want to leverage their power to build a student
movement in solidarity with the broader aims
of OWS. Yet how to do that is still being worked
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began as an encampment in New York City’s
Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011. It has since evolved, with protests moving
into new cities and in a number of different tactical directions.
*The author would like to thank Cinzia Arruzza, Dan DiMaggio, Gabriel
Hetland, Stephanie Luce, Glen Pine, and Isaac Silver for their helpful insights.