Occupy Movement – What Does It Tell Us About America?
2012-03-31 · Guest: Anthony Fisher (Filmmaker and Reason TV producer) · 50:42
Origins and motivations of Occupy Wall Street
Bob Zadek and guest Anthony Fisher explore the origins, motivations, and internal contradictions of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They discuss how the movement, often perceived as purely left-wing, actually shared significant common ground with libertarians and the Tea Party in its opposition to crony capitalism and government bailouts. The conversation also touches on the movement’s anarchist structure and its potential impact on the 2012 presidential election.
Topics: Occupy Wall Street, crony capitalism, bailouts, libertarianism, Tea Party, 2012 election, Gary Johnson, civil liberties, Federal Restricted Grounds Improvement Act.
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek: Host
- Anthony Fisher: Filmmaker and Reason TV producer
- Caller (Terry): Listener from Napa
- Occupier 1: Young man in video clip
- Occupier 2: Older man in video clip
Introduction to the Occupy Movement [00:15]
Bob Zadek: Hi everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show every Sunday at noon at 910 AM NewsTalk 910. Thanks so much for listening. I am your host, as always, Bob Zadek. We are the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area and around the country. Share your views: 800-345-5639. Speed dial us, write it down, don’t lose that number: 800-345-5639. Listen to us on the web, anywhere you are, www.newstalk910.com, anywhere in the world. Thanks so much for listening. We are the show of ideas, not attitude. We explore the world’s events through the prism of libertarian thought. Thanks so much for listening.
Well, it’s springtime in San Francisco. Springtime is around the corner in the rest of the country. And of course, with spring comes the end of hibernation. If you go out into the woods, you can just see all those Occupy Wall Streeters stretching their limbs, coming out from wherever they were dwelling for the winter, climbing back into their tents and sleeping bags and ready to exert their influence again on world affairs and presidential politics. Will the Occupy Wall Street movement be as active this spring as they were last fall? And what is the Occupy movement all about? What did they want? What do they want? And of paramount importance, how will the Occupy movement affect the 2012 election? And what does the Occupy movement mean to and what does it say about America today?
Origins and Early Days [01:29]
Bob Zadek: The Occupy movement is quite interesting. It was, like the Tea Party movement before it, a grassroots movement. It wasn’t organized by a bunch of fat cats with a bunch of money who thought they would stir things up. This seems to have been a bottom-up movement like the Tea Party. And like the Tea Party, it grew in strength, captured the imagination of the American public and therefore the media, who likes to give the American public what they want to hear and what they want to read. So what exactly was the Occupy movement? What is the Occupy movement? And what does it tell us about America?
Well, in exploring this issue, I thought I would track down someone who perhaps knows more about the Occupy movement than anyone else. Somebody who has been on the ground studying the movement since its very earliest days. And I’d like to welcome to my show and introduce to my audience, Anthony Fisher. Anthony, hi Bob, how are you? Hi Anthony. Anthony is a producer at Reason TV. Probably has the best job in the country. He gets to make videos for Reason TV. I invite you to watch his videos. They are, A, great fun, B, very instructive, and C, will get your juices flowing. So thank you, Anthony, for all your great work and for your continued work. Anthony hangs out in New York City, is a filmmaker, and his short films have been on Sundance Channel, the Comedy Channel, Salon, Funny or Die, Shorts TV, and numerous festivals around the world. And Anthony was on the ground at the earliest stages at Zuccotti Park in New York City where the Occupy movement started. Anthony, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us.
Anthony Fisher: Thanks, Bob. Great to be here.
Bob Zadek: Anthony, tell us sort of first impressions. What do you think started—now we know sort of the factual start of the Occupy movement, but what gave it momentum? It started back in September of 2011, and they sort of in general were protesting economic inequality, whatever that even means. And by the way, I don’t mean to denigrate the Occupy movement because I in fact endorse most of what they stand for. So you’ll not hear any negative words or thoughts from me on the Occupy movement. Anthony can speak for himself. But what was sort of the 30,000-foot view? What was the Occupy movement all about and what is it all about?
Anthony Fisher: Well, first of all, I want to agree with you that I don’t have any intention of throwing a huge blanket over the Occupy movement and trying to pigeonhole it as any particular kind of communist, radical, distasteful movement. I think that the anger is completely genuine. Like any other mass movement, you have elements that are unfortunate and usually get the most attention. But in September of 2011, a Canadian organization called Adbusters basically just threw the date up on their website saying, “September 17th, everybody let’s go to this obscure public-private hybrid park about two blocks from Wall Street and let’s occupy it,” in the tradition of, you know, late ’60s radicals occupying college campuses. And I don’t even think Adbusters could have predicted how much fire it caught so quickly. And I think that in the earliest days, you may recall there were some pretty egregious cases of police brutality, including a couple of young women being pepper-sprayed at close range by a senior ranking officer of the NYPD. And I think when that video went viral, I think that was a tremendous catalyst for the movement spreading to other cities.
Libertarian Elements in Zuccotti Park [02:40]
Anthony Fisher: And that’s I also think when it was a huge catalyst for the movement catching fire in other cities, but I also think it may have already started to lose its focus, which was originally on income inequality and then just kind of spread into a broader anti-establishment, certainly left-leaning anti-establishment movement. But in particular, I found, and I found this right off the bat when I went down to Occupy Wall Street, that it wasn’t a monolithically left-wing movement. That there were people who literally identified as former Tea Partiers who became disenfranchised with the Tea Party movement because of what they described as its hijacking by the religious right or the pro-war right. There were a great many Ron Paul fans and supporters and activists.
Bob Zadek: Well, Anthony, I’d just like to interrupt for a second because I’m going to forget this thought unless I say it. If you start with the Tea Party and subtract social conservatives, that equation says pure libertarian. If you were to reduce libertarian thought to a mathematical equation, it’s Tea Party minus social conservatism. So you’ve just described core libertarianism. But go ahead, I’m sorry to interrupt.
Anthony Fisher: Yeah, no, that’s what I’m saying. They were—I mean, it was generally an anti-authoritarian, you know, “eff the man,” “eff the system,” “eff the crony capitalism.” Obviously, the bank bailouts were something that seemed to unify everybody at Zuccotti Park, whether they were left, right, in the middle. It was just a genuine distaste for the idea that the government could pick winners and losers and invariably those winners that were picked were well-connected to either the previous administration, the current administration, or both. And like I said, the bailouts were a huge catalyst and just a general feeling of not having a voice. And don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of orthodox left-wing, even communist activity down there. But what I was surprised about every time I went down there was how much libertarian ideology was being discussed. And there was a great deal of common ground among the occupiers. And I think that if it wasn’t for the image of libertarianism as being a uniquely pro-business, pro-capitalist, anti-regulation philosophy, I think a lot of these people in the Occupy movement would be—probably they wouldn’t feel bad about calling themselves libertarians.
Crony Capitalism and the Bailouts [03:59]
Bob Zadek: Well, and what’s interesting is even though the Occupy movement sort of spoke the words of anti-capitalism, really their complaints were the way capitalism was hijacked with crony capitalism. More about that after the break. But whether they knew it or not, they were complaining that we didn’t have enough pure capitalism. They couldn’t have known that, but that’s what they were complaining about. So the irony is they were giving lip service—they thought they were angry at capitalism, but what they were angry about was the abortion of capitalism, the hijacking of capitalism by government and by, for the most part, the large banks who were appropriately the targets. The large banks were truly—and their water carriers in Congress and in the administration—the large banks were truly the Satans of the whole movement. They were appropriately the source of the anger. So the occupiers were not angry at capitalism. They thought they were. They were angry at the distortion of capitalism by the administration.
This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking to Anthony Fisher, who has been on the ground studying and filming the Occupy movement. He knows it better than anybody. 800-345-5639 for your thoughts and observations on the Occupy movement and what their effect will be on the 2012 election and thereafter. Be back in 90 seconds.
[Music break]
Caller Terry: Nuances and Anti-Establishment [05:58]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, everyone. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at noon at NewsTalk 910. Here to share libertarian views of world affairs. We are the show of ideas, not attitude. We like to enrich your Sundays with a little solid political thought to get that blood coursing through your veins. And today I am happy to be joined by Anthony Fisher. Anthony is a filmmaker. Anthony has the best job in America. He produces TV videos for Reason TV. And Anthony, by the way, I have to promote both Reason and you. So is there a website where folks can go to to see your ongoing work for Reason TV?
Anthony Fisher: Yes, you can go to reason.com, you can go to reason.tv, or you can go to youtube.com/reasontv. And you can see my own work at www.anthonylfisher (with no C).com.
Bob Zadek: And my promise is the blood will race through your body and you will have a darn good time watching these videos. It is a great way to spend five or ten minutes a day, and we are delighted to welcome Anthony to the show. You know, Anthony, when I think about the Occupy movement, if they were—they being the occupiers—were protesting capitalism, well, capitalism has been around for 230 years, but not the Occupy movement. So I think back to when I, like all of us, when I have a problem with my computer and some piece of software is not working so well, and I call in IT or tech support, the first thing tech support asks me when software starts to malfunction is, “Well, what did you do differently? Sort of what caused the problem today and not yesterday?” So I asked myself when I look at the Occupy movement, if they were protesting capitalism or in a broader sense protesting the economic system or the unfairness, well, what happened today that made the Occupy movement spring up that didn’t happen in the past? And the answer is so clear: it is the bailouts. So what’s new is the headline was the bailouts. And so a lot of the occupiers, Anthony, those students who were—they were students and they wanted their student loans discharged. They were simply asking to be bailed out like everybody else.
Anthony Fisher: Absolutely. They—it wasn’t that they were anti-government intervention or anti-bailout, they just felt that the wrong people got bailed out. I mean, and as I said, I don’t want to overstate the case for libertarians among the Occupy movement. It is definitely a left-of-center movement. And I think that that’s kind of, you know, just always part of the American youth culture. But I think with social media and The Daily Show and Michael Moore documentaries being in a lot of ways the primary source of information for young disenfranchised people, I think them coalescing around an angry anti-capitalist movement isn’t exactly surprising. I just—I think that the reason that this caught fire now is because of the tools at the disposal of young people, the very inexpensive tools at their disposal. It is a lot easier to have an idea spread like wildfire than it was even 15 years ago. Anthony, we have Terry in Napa who’d like to join our conversation. Terry, thanks so much for listening. What’s on your mind this morning?
Caller (Terry): Hi. I wanted to generally agree with what you guys are saying and you’ve targeted some very interesting nuances that the mainstream—I shouldn’t say mainstream—the conservative media misses. As you were saying, Bob, these people are in fact complaining about crony capitalism, which is a distortion of capitalism. And in denouncing these people, you have guys like Rush Limbaugh, who I respect very much, defending the worst of crony capitalism. And there are these vast numbers of people who feel disenfranchised by the system. It is very diffuse. I saw every variety of communist and socialist putting out their stuff there and they were largely ignored by most of the people. So it’s a very interesting, compelling movement, however you feel about it ultimately. It’s going to be very hard for anybody to control it. And, you know, it’s a tiger that you ride at your own risk. And by encouraging it in any way, the administration is doing itself a disservice because this is a largely, vaguely—well, a large diffuse anti-establishment movement. And liberal progressives are the establishment now. You saw that problem with Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland, who’s got the most liberal leftist credentials you can imagine, and they want her head.
Bob Zadek: You know, Terry, your observations are so right on. I must really compliment you. You hit the nail on the head that the movement right now is not controllable by anybody. And we remember early on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, they really tried to appropriate the movement to their own purposes, Anthony, and you can sort of join in on this. And they failed miserably. They didn’t get it that these Democrats were as much the target of the movement as a perceived ally. There’s no way on earth the movement would join in lockstep with mainstream Democratic leadership.
The Anarchist Structure of Occupy [08:35]
Anthony Fisher: Well, I also think there’s something to be said for the chaos of Occupy Wall Street. It’s actually something that I didn’t feature in any of my videos because I figured it had been covered ad nauseam. But part of the Occupy culture is the almost anarchist—and I don’t mean that as a negative, it’s a deliberately anarchist community where there are no leaders. And to vote on anything is an extraordinarily time-consuming process. And at Occupy Atlanta, Representative John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights community and very much in good standing with the Democratic Party and liberals in general, was not even allowed to speak at an Occupy Atlanta event because some—a few people objected in the crowd saying that while they respect Congressman Lewis, they felt that having him speak would elevate him over the community at large. So there’s a case of a well-established political figure offering his support to the movement and having them be turned down, not because of anything he had done, but because that would have, at least in the occupiers’ minds, that would have taken away from the spirit of pure anarchist community.
Caller (Terry): Could I make just one more?
Bob Zadek: Oh, by all means, go ahead, Terry.
Caller (Terry): Okay, on a general strike day in Oakland on November 2nd, I believe, they’re on their way to the port. And I was at the square when thousands are going off. I might have seen, you know, five or six thousand, I think were their estimates. But it was really impressive. But they had people haranguing them as they left. Some guys were using code words suggesting violence, you know, “by all means necessary,” blah, blah, blah. But meanwhile, there’s a middle-aged black woman who is a classic Al Sharpton crowd type, and she started talking about, “And that IRS that’s taken our homes and kicking us out of our lives,” you know, she started denouncing the IRS. So like I said, you know, it’s very volatile and it’s potentially very dangerous. But again, against this establishment, I have no problem with it.
Bob Zadek: Terry, thanks so much for your call and thanks also for being a listener.
Caller (Terry): Thank you.
Common Ground and the IRS [09:53]
Bob Zadek: What’s interesting about Terry’s observation about some woman who you would expect to be an Al Sharpton type activist protesting the IRS, I’m reminded of Thomas Jefferson in his inaugural address in 1800 when he tried to bring the country together. He said famously—and he was, of course, an anti-federalist—he said in trying to bring the country together, he said to the country, “We are all federalists and we are all anti-federalists.” In other words, we all have core common values. And I think that can be said, Anthony, that we are all libertarians. And people throughout the range of political thought are discovering, “Oh my goodness, that’s what I am.” And here we have, I dare say, this anonymous woman in Oakland that our caller Terry mentioned, she discovered she’s a libertarian, she just doesn’t know it.
Now, Anthony, you talked about the fact at how much the Occupy movement abhors anybody resembling—assuming a leadership capacity, that they are anarchistic in the good sense of the word. And we have a clip, Terry, that I’ll ask you—we have a couple of minutes before break—I’ll play the clip that I know you filmed. This is from your video showing how much anybody in the movement abhors leadership and yet tries to be the leader. Now, Anthony, I’m going to play the clip about the young fellow who tried to speak for the group and give the audience the background and then I’ll play the clip.
Anthony Fisher: Yeah, so this was probably two weeks into the occupation. This was definitely still when there was a buzz of excitement and everybody was pretty much sticking to the talking point that there were no leaders, even though at this point they had already built a pretty impressive anarchist community of, you know, information desks, sanitation, legal, there was a department for everybody. It was a pretty impressive bureaucracy. So this young man was at the information booth and I asked him who’s controlling the information, who’s running the Twitter feeds. And he, you know, gave me the stock answer, “There are no leaders, it’s unfiltered.” And then really almost immediately and right on cue, I couldn’t have planned it better if I was, you know, writing dark comedy, a guy big-footed him, basically stepped in his way and pointed to me and said, “No, you should talk to me.” And said, “I’ve been here a week and a half, you’ve only been here for a few days.” So Tim, let’s go to break. Tim, let’s go to break with that clip that Anthony just described.
Occupier 1: Who’s controlling the information here? Everyone. That’s just it. Since there’s no leaders, there’s no edits, there’s no spin, there’s nothing.
Occupier 2: Have you been down here from the start? No, I came up—I got here Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM. I’ve read that some of the demands are starting to get a little more specific and one of them was universal—what’s up? Just actually discussing with him that this is kind of a leaderless movement, but you just kind of pulled rank there. I didn’t pull nothing, I’m just going to tell you I’m more educated than the little kid is. Yeah, so that would make you a leader of this particular part of the movement. Absolutely. Information man. Are you out of work right now? Yes, I am. Was a local one plumber’s helper. I used to get $200 a week for 40 hours a week. $200, how are you supposed to survive on that?
[Music break]
Peter Schiff and Pro-Capitalist Occupiers [13:00]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, everyone. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at noon at NewsTalk 910. 910 AM in the Bay Area, www.newstalk910.com anywhere else in the country. Points of views are always welcome on the Bob Zadek Show. 800-345-5639. Become a media darling, share your views with my audience. Today, Anthony Fisher, filmmaker, producer at Reason TV, has graciously agreed to spend the hour with me discussing the Occupy movement, how it started, where it’s going, and what will its effect be upon presidential politics in this crucially important year.
And I guess a question I always like to ask when I study the Occupy movement, the Tea Party movement, or any other political phenomenon is: why now? What happened now that made the Occupy movement—that gave birth to the Occupy movement? Why not three years ago or five years ago? Now, many people who describe the basis of the Occupy movement find it to be based upon a complaint about income inequality. Now, I think that’s probably a bit mistaken. It’s given lip service because it’s so obvious there is income inequality. But we have always had income inequality in this country. So when you ask why now, there’s nothing new about income inequality. So what was different? Well, what’s different is there has been more obvious crony capitalism, more obvious one hand washing the other between big government and big business, particularly big banks, but include big auto and big GE. So the complaint is not really about income inequality. In this country, we embrace the fact that people with different skills achieve different levels of income. And in fact, nobody seems to complain very much about film stars, sports stars, or other people who make buckets of money and frankly, in my opinion, undeserved by my own standards. But nobody is angry at ballplayers making tons of money for just playing a sport. So we don’t care that much about income inequality. It is when the game gets—so we like to reward people who deserve it. What we don’t like is when government or business crash into what most Americans accept as our DNA, our ethos, and that is a meritocracy, which of course it’s never perfect, but we like to think that it’s there. We sure hope that it’s there. It’s when somebody tries to rig the game that Americans get all up in arms. And it’s that same rigging of the game that gave rise to the Tea Party movement a year earlier and the Occupy movement a year later. So while the media, many in the media, will express the core complaint of the Occupy movement as income inequality, I submit to you it’s not. It’s access inequality. It’s rigging the game. It’s Goldman Sachs having its senior executives spend time at Treasury Department looking after Goldman Sachs. And it is crony capitalism, which for some reason became exacerbated in the Obama administration. It’s always been there. It goes back perhaps to the Big Four in California and the railroads getting all this land and in effect President Lincoln giving all this money and land, and President Lincoln and his successors, to the railroads. That was the first introduction to crony capitalism. But I submit, Anthony, that that’s really the core of the belief. It’s the unfairness. It’s the changing the rules of American-style capitalism that most people were angry about.
Anthony Fisher: I would agree with that as the start of the movement. There was a video I did with Peter Schiff, the investment guru, and thank you, thank you. We were down there for probably about three hours. And this was during the original occupation of Zuccotti Park, I believe it was in October of 2011. And, you know, he took all comers. He was extremely feisty and for the most part, the discussion was civil. There were a couple of times when some of the occupiers arguing with him violated his personal space, and I was extraordinarily impressed that the Occupy Wall Street security teams sprung into action and removed these people that were violating civility. And for the most part, you know, there was a lot of—there was some yelling, but there was also some common ground. And there was a young black man who didn’t appear to be any older than about 22 years old, and he repeatedly kept trying to get Mr. Schiff off of the point of view that he kept expressing, which was that the entire movement was basically a communist movement. He kept trying to bring him back to the idea that Peter Schiff should be part of the Occupy Wall Street movement because even though he’s a proud card-carrying member of the 1%, he was for true free-market capitalism. And a great many of the occupiers, some of whom raised their hands when asked, said they were pro-capitalism.
Bob Zadek: So, and in fact, there was that clip that I’m going to play, Anthony, towards the end of your video with the out-of-work blue-collar worker who embraces capitalism and he was obviously committed to the Occupy movement. So to reinforce what you have just said, Tim, can we play the clip towards the end of Anthony’s Occupy video?
Occupier 2: I still believe, you know, in the principles of America and the Constitution and capitalism as well. You know, you win, you lose. Now when these corporations, these people, when they lose, they should just lose. This is life. You know, this is—I mean, it sucks. All right, great, you know. When I lose, nobody comes helps me.
The “Occupy Bill” and Civil Liberties [17:28]
Bob Zadek: “When I lose, nobody comes to help me.” I think that that sentence, Anthony, that you were clever enough to capture on film, that sentence shows the simpatico between the occupiers, the Tea Partiers, and the libertarians. If you lose, you lose. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. Now, if that principle would have been applied to the banks, there would never have been an Occupy movement. That this country is far more comfortable living with the economic downturn from “if you lose, you lose, it sucks, but that’s the way it is.” This country is far more comfortable living with the consequences of the rules as they are. Look, when you play a sport and when you watch young boys or girls competing in athletics and they want to win so badly and then they lose, a tendency is to protect and to make the losers feel better. But that’s the game. There’s going to be a loser and the system is the better for it. America is the better for the competition, even though competition means somebody loses. So I think the occupiers, Anthony, really have no beef with capitalism. Their beef is with the game being rigged and the crossover between big business and big government with Jeffrey Immelt at GE in effect converting his company to be an arm of the United States government, with Jamie Dimon at Chase converting his bank to simply being another government agency. That’s what the complaint is. Is that what you detected in covering the movement?
Anthony Fisher: Well, I mean, I would say I would agree with you. I mean, here’s the thing about the passage of time and certain events. They make the movements evolve and sometimes they make them evolve into unfortunate places that are well beyond their original purposes, like the Tea Party. How a group like the Tea Party could come out and be outraged about a government spiraling out of control, going into debt, spending too much, yet evolve into a social conservative pro-war party is beyond me. I don’t know how you can be pro-small government and be pro-war. So that’s where the Tea Party, I think, was hijacked by certain elements. They certainly had some electoral victories and they’re still a force in the Republican Party, but they’re really not front-page news anymore. And I think that the Occupy movement started out with a real chance to win hearts and minds of people that weren’t on the far left. And I think that over the passage of time, they’ve evolved into more of a monolithically left-wing movement. I mean, the last caller just talked about the general strike in Oakland. The next major Occupy movement—I mean, right now Occupy Wall Street is occupying the—or they’re attempting to occupy the Brooklyn Bridge right now as we speak. But there’s a general strike called for May 1st, May Day, which as we know is, you know, both a labor holiday around the world but is more widely recognized as a communist holiday. And they use a lot of communist imagery and they’ve really adopted the idea that was put forth by Michael Moore in 2008, which is that capitalism isn’t an economic mode, it’s an evil. So I think that originally the Occupy movement had a great deal of common ground with the Tea Party and like the original incarnation of the Tea Party had a legitimate beef. I’ve been disappointed to note that they’ve evolved into something that is much more monolithically left-wing and probably unlikely to win the hearts and minds of the public at large.
Bob Zadek: And yet, Anthony, as we go to break, what’s really interesting is, as you have pointed out, the Occupy movement is expanding their political goals. And if you, as I have done, if you do some research and comb through the reporting on the Occupy movement and their goals, you find out that among the complaints of the Occupy movement are Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo Bay, Obama’s assassination of a US citizen got the occupiers or many of them really in a dither, the National Defense Authorization Act, which I discussed on the show a couple of weeks ago, which empowered the president to incarcerate Americans and to kill Americans on his own say-so, and Obama’s appointing of so many folks from Wall Street into his cabinet. That when you read the complaints, it tells me as we go to break that the occupiers are hardly a reliable ally of the Democrats going into the fall election. This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking with Anthony Fisher. We’re exploring the Occupy movement and its effect upon the 2012 election. Will they make the difference? If so, in what way? 800-345-5639. Back in 90 seconds.
[Music break]
The 2012 Election and Gary Johnson [18:44]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, everyone. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, every Sunday at noon at NewsTalk 910. Call Bob now: 1-800-345-5639. Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show every Sunday at noon at NewsTalk 910, 910 AM in the Bay Area, www.newstalk910.com anywhere else in the country. Just click that little old “listen live” button and you can listen to the show anywhere where you have Wi-Fi or computer reception. Thanks so much for listening. We are the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area. We like to think of ourselves as the show of ideas, not attitude. For your ideas, 800-345-5639. Become a media darling, share your views with my audience.
Today, Anthony Fisher, filmmaker, producer at Reason TV, has graciously agreed to spend an hour with me discussing the Occupy movement, its roots and its future, and in this last segment of the show, how they might affect the 2012 election. Will they become a political force? And also, what has been the effect, the result of the Occupy movement? What have they accomplished, if anything? Well, on the ugly side of things, and without them knowing it, they, the Occupy movement, resulted in a piece of really nasty legislation which was passed both houses of Congress—there’s a headline—with bipartisan support—another headline—with very little opposition and recently happily signed into law by President Obama. This statute is known deceptively as the Federal Restricted Grounds Improvement Act. Well, that sounds pretty positive. Federal Restricted Grounds Improvement Act. It was just signed by Obama and this has been nicknamed the “Occupy Bill.” What does it do? It makes it a federal crime to enter a building, to trespass a building without permission if the Secret Service is present in the building or if there is a government function in process. Now, of course, trespass might be a crime under state law and it might be a civil wrong where the person who owns the property can sue you. But now it becomes a federal crime if the Secret Service is there. Good grief, why do we need yet another federal, federal crime? And if you think, “Well, Secret Service equals the president, it’s good it protects the president,” well, I guess, but lots of people have Secret Service protection who are not quite the president. There was a couple of months ago, there was a protester who disrupted the Santorum—a Santorum political rally by sprinkling glitter on Rick Santorum. We hardly think of that as being a federal crime. But Santorum, being a credible presidential candidate, has Secret Service protection. Sprinkling glitter on Rick Santorum will now be a federal crime. Do we need yet another federal crime? I will remind my listeners that the founders only thought it necessary to have three acts as constituting a federal crime in the Constitution. Can anybody name the three federal crimes set forth in the Constitution? I can, can you?
But back to our show. Anthony, what is—now the Occupy movement has had an effect upon the banks, but more in the changing of their message than in their behavior. So the Occupy movement hasn’t yet had any—they haven’t really influenced an election. They haven’t had a chance yet because they became active last year. There hasn’t been a meaningful election since then. What do you expect to be the effect of the Occupy movement on the election, if at all?
Anthony Fisher: It’s an interesting question. It’s a good question. I wish I had a more satisfying answer for you. I think that because of their insistence on remaining an anarchist institution and their at times admirable refusal to be co-opted by political figures like Van Jones or Nancy Pelosi, I don’t see them putting forth—like the way we can recognize a few people like Rand Paul as credible Tea Party candidates. I don’t see that happening at the moment of any credible, quote-unquote, “Occupy” congressional candidate. And I think Obama’s got much bigger fish to fry than income inequality. I think he’s going to be dealing with whatever the Supreme Court fallout and the decision on Obamacare is. I think that Iran and Israel is going to be a major issue. I don’t see the Occupy movement having the kind of electoral effect in 2012 the way the Tea Party did in 2010.
Bob Zadek: Well, then the related question, Anthony, and the beauty of this is you can speculate all you want and no one will ever know if you are wrong. But your speculation is more meaningful than others because you have studied the Occupy movement more than most of us have. So the question is—and we may never know this—but flash forward to November of 2012 and the election results are in. Do you think—and the occupiers clearly will not vote as a monolith—but how—and let us assume that Romney is the Republican candidate and perhaps Gary Johnson as the libertarian candidate. How do you think—what will the statistics show as to how the occupiers had voted?
Anthony Fisher: I see a lot of occupiers sitting this one out, which I think is a mistake on their part. I think Gary Johnson is the—has—I mean, when he, again, assuming he locks up the Libertarian Party nomination, which he really should because he’s the most credible Libertarian Party potential Libertarian Party candidate maybe in their history, maybe other than when Ron Paul ran for them in 1988. I don’t see the occupiers voting for Mitt Romney under any circumstances. And while, you know, certain elements of the Democratic Party have tried to co-opt the Occupy movement, and you made the point before about Guantanamo Bay and all these other terrible intrusions on civil liberties and really awful precedents being set by the Obama administration, I don’t see the Occupy movement at large voting against President Obama for Mitt Romney. And there doesn’t appear to be a Ralph Nader figure in the upcoming election that’s there to siphon off left-leaning votes. So numbers-wise, I’m just not even going to make up numbers for you as far as who I think they’re going to vote for. I think a portion of the Ron Paul revolution that will vote for Gary Johnson as an acceptable protest vote. And I see—what I see is Obama wins and a Republican Congress is there to keep him in check. It seems like the most likely scenario. And I don’t know how much the Occupy movement will have to do with that. And it remains to be seen if the Occupy movement will continue to be a big story. Certainly they’re rejuvenating. The “Occupy Spring” is upon us. They’re coming back. They’re in a lot of cities, especially in New York. They’re currently occupying Union Square, but not 24 hours like they did in Zuccotti Park. Union Square, of course, its very name evokes a history of left-wing protest. And the May Day protests, the general strike that they’ve called for, could be a huge boon for them and it could be a disaster for them. The AFL-CIO has already said that the major unions will not be joining in the general strike that’s been called for by Occupy Wall Street. But if there are some big, broadly attended protests around the country on May 1st and some of the more quick-trigger-fingered police departments around the country do the occupiers a favor by inciting violence or doing what they did during the original Occupy Wall Street crackdown last November and sweeping up journalists and civilians indiscriminately, the Occupy movement could grow or it could finally wear out its welcome.
Bob Zadek: What’s interesting is you talk about police overstepping their bounds. A little-known fact: when the police in New York City were arresting occupiers at the earliest days of the movement, Anthony, when you were there, the statute under which they arrested the occupiers—because the occupiers were doing nothing that you and I would consider to be wrong—but the statute was a 150-year-old New York State statute that prohibited wearing a mask in public. And many of the occupiers were wearing like Obama masks and they were arrested for protesting wearing a mask. To show you—I’m not particularly a—hello? Yeah, I’m here, go ahead. We’re just closing down. Go ahead, Anthony, a last word.
Anthony Fisher: Oh, sorry. I was there with Governor Gary Johnson for Reason TV and I was manhandled by the police on the sidewalk because I was supposedly blocking sidewalk traffic at 10:00 at night.
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I’ve been speaking with Anthony Fisher of Reason TV. Occupy movement: will they affect the 2012 election? I’ll be back next week with another libertarian hour. Thanks so much for listening and thanks again to Anthony.
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