Occupy Princeton

You may have noticed us the past few weeks. Since Nov. 17, we have been congregating weekly outside of Frist Campus Center, standing in a circle and shouting echoes of what speakers say. We are Occupy Princeton.

In solidarity with the international Occupy movement, we hold our General Assemblies on Frist North Lawn. As we are still a new group, our ideas for civil disobedience and peaceful protest are mostly in the planning stages. Yet the process of holding a General Assembly is in itself transformative.

(At this point I must pause to make clear that although I may use the pronoun “we,” I do not represent Occupy Princeton. While I voice concerns held by many, I speak only for myself. It is antithetical to the movement for one person to speak for others.)

The General Assembly provides an opportunity for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff and community members to voice their concerns, whether or not they identify with the Occupy movement. While in general we are united by a sense of economic injustice, this is not the only injustice that motivates us. Regardless of cause, the General Assembly provides a forum for all voices to be heard and for people to collectively and democratically develop solutions to societal (and University) problems.

It is the General Assembly, I believe, that makes the Occupy movement so powerful. While there are legitimate concerns about the racial inclusivity of the movement, and some have accused Occupy of being a movement for straight white men, it is amazing that the movement has spread from New York to California and across the world. Economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental injustice — none of these is a new problem, but the promise of a chance to be heard, taking inspiration from the Arab Spring and the indigent movements in Greece and Spain have galvanized a group of people that might otherwise have sat frustrated at home.

In the aftermath of the recent economic crises, the Wall Street bailouts and the expansion of corporate personhood in the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, many Americans feel disenfranchised and disempowered. Even students at an elite institution like Princeton feel that the concentration of wealth on Wall Street and Capital Hill has created an oligarchy out of what is only nominally a democracy. With our votes seeming to hold little sway, we have peacefully taken to the streets — or campus sidewalks — to reclaim democracy. While we recognize that not everyone agrees with us, we hope everyone — students and administrators alike — will respect our desire for democracy and our right to free speech and peaceful action.

The General Assembly and Occupy movement is a manifestation of democracy and of the American rights to free speech and freedom of assembly — it is this fact that has made the recent acts of police brutality in Seattle, Portland, Oakland and New York City and at University of California, Berkeley and UC Davis that much more appalling. In each case, peaceful protesters were shot with rubber bullets, tear gassed, pepper sprayed and/or beaten with batons by police officers. Regardless of your opinion of the Occupy movement, this is an egregious violation of democracy. Not only did police repress the voices of these protesters, they physically harmed protesters and even landed an Iraq veteran in the hospital with a skull fracture. While this type of police behavior is not new to many minority communities, the recent events at Occupy protests have caught national attention. Hopefully they will provide a long-needed wake-up call that police brutality is an undemocratic and unacceptable way to deal with peaceful protesters.

We hope that more students, faculty, staff and community members will join us at our General Assemblies and in our acts of civil disobedience. We want this to be a movement for everyone who feels disempowered and voiceless — regardless of race, class, educational status, sexual orientation or any other identity marker.

But even if you do not wish to join us, even if you disagree with our politics, we hope you will stand with us in solidarity with the protesters who have been injured. We call on the University and all Princeton students to denounce the nationwide acts of police brutality and to support a system that allows peaceful protest and engages in democratic dialogue rather than censorship.

Miriam Geronimus is an ecology and evolutionary biology major from Ann Arbor, Mich. She can be reached at mgeronim@princeton.edu.