The nuisance paradigm
Occupy Seattle moved into my neighborhood sometime while I was away, and they are now encamped 5 blocks down the hill from my apartment, at Seattle Central. As someone who spends all day in the neighborhood, it has definitely had some effect on the area, but I don’t think that effect has been all that significant. True, the Walgreens across the street from the encampment now has a sign up saying the bathroom is unavailable due to vandalism, but Capital Hill was a weird mix of yuppies, crust punks, and junkies before the protesters came, and there’s only been a slight uptick of junkies in the coffeeshops since they arrived. But the presence of those folks - “undesirables” - is the rationale being used by cities around the country for breaking up the encampments. It’s a way of stifling the protest without addressing the issues they bring up, trying to win on a technicality. Damon DiCicco calls it the “nuisance paradigm,” noting that the media has moved from portraying protesters as un-American to emphasizing their lack of adherence to social norms, and it is in full swing right now.
Hannah Arendt, in On Revolution, argued that no revolution could succeed unless the “social problem” was first solved, by which she meant hunger and poverty. I am reminded of that as protest movements across the country are evicted on the basis of social dysfunction happening supposedly within their ranks. People with no place to go will naturally gravitate to any large, open outdoor gathering, but to blame the gatherings for their presence rather than the policy apparatus that has given them nowhere else to go seems like a cruel joke. Surely no one would be more in favor of providing free housing and comprehensive mental health care to the homeless than Occupy protesters. That the system has not only failed to do so, but then uses its own failure as an excuse to stifle political action should rightfully enrage anyone concerned with the possibility of social change in America. To ask a social movement to first fix the problems the system has created before objecting to the system’s problems is to make social movements impossible. Welcome to the neighborhood, protesters. Happy to have you around.
