On Tuesday evening, two different speaker panels organized by Georgetown Occupy and McDonough School of Business Dean David Thomas, respectively, provided contrasting viewpoints on the two-month-old Occupy D.C. protest in McPherson Square.
At “What is the Occupy Movement?” organized by Georgetown Occupy, a group recently formed in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students gathered with professors for a panel discussion featuring lectures by three Georgetown professors and a doctorate student on the goals, achievements and future of the movement.
Jennifer Luff, a Georgetown history professor and Research Director for the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, set the tone of the discussion. She related the contemporary Occupy movement to the history of social movements in the West that “informs both the critiques and the assumptions that people make about what Occupy is and what Occupy should be.”
Barbara Wein, a Georgetown professor of Justice and Peace Studies, said that, contrary to popular opinion, the Occupy movement does possess a real list of demands. These goals include the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, the overturning of Citizens United, and the banning of high-frequency flash trading, she said.
“The Occupy movement has very clear goals, and don’t let people tell you it doesn’t!” she said.
Paul Adler, a doctorate student in the Georgetown history department and member of Occupy D.C.’s Outreach Committee, disagreed, saying that there “aren’t any policy demands that have passed in the general assemblies at any of the Occupies … there are issues that protests have joined in with solidarity with existing struggles and movements. I think [there is an] immense diversity of political views.”
Adler feels this issue is both a strength and a weakness of the movement. He noted that many of history’s most successful social movements, such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s, were made up of groups that had very different political ideas coming together. However, he also noted the potential problem this presents.
“I can see some very boring and also really angry conversations and arguments between people if you force all of those political ideas to become one,” Adler said.
The panel opened the doors for discussion on the pros and cons of the movement. “I think we had a successfully participatory event where people talked about how they were feeling about these issues. It opened the way for students to get more involved,” Samuel Geaney-Moore (SFS ’12), a member of Georgetown Occupy, said.
The MSB event, titled, “Where’s the ‘I’ in Occupy,” provided a slightly different viewpoint on the movement. Composed of Georgetown students and people generally involved with the Occupy movement, the event focused on implications of the movement for the economy and potential job markets.
Both panels allowed for a range of views on the different facets of the Occupy movement. Gina Bull (COL ’12), a member of Georgetown Occupy and one of the organizers of the first panel, was very pleased with the panel.
“[It] emphasized the importance of engaging and participating with Occupy and the issues it addresses,” she said. “The event was successful. We had a good turnout, and there was a lot of lively discussion.”
