Occupy San Jose protesters decamp but struggle on
Originally published by the San Jose Mercury News Nov. 21, 2011.
By Patrick May
The occupiers, for now at least, have de-occupied. San Jose’s City Hall plaza is calm, with only a handful of active protesters still on site Monday, stubbornly waving signs four days after police broke up their 18-tent encampment.
But the movement — along with the fledgling microeconomy it spawned the past six weeks — still thrives underground.
“Getting thrown out of the plaza has made us even more creative,” said Occupy San Jose supporter Shaunn Cartwright, 41. “We are now a mobile occupation and we’re occupying everywhere. We are alive and well.”
Their economy might be under the radar and on the fly, their temporary housing stock scattered to the wind. But the group’s finance committee still meets regularly. The boycott of a nearby pizza joint that put up anti-Occupy signs continues. And the activists have located several foreclosed homes they plan to occupy in the coming days.
“We haven’t given up,” 19-year-old William O’Malley said Monday in front of City Hall. “We’ve got our tents hidden nearby and we’ll be back.”
For nearly two months, Occupy San Jose has supported a fully functioning, albeit unstable, economy. Besides the urban real estate, ranging from upscale Coleman tents to fixer-uppers, there was a treasury department (an off-site lock-box holding cash donations), class divisions (welfare recipients to trust-fund babies), economic indicators (the size of the evening’s donated pot of chili was one), and close to 100 percent employment (placard-wavers, security teams and moving crews), even though laborers were compensated with good karma not currency.
Woven into this tableau of tarpaulin was a largely cash-less barter network, complete with a haberdasher and a self-styled barber giving free Mohawk haircuts to keep the Occupy movement looking sharp.
“We have a lot of people who want to volunteer or donate food, so I’m trying to organize and motivate the occupiers to better utilize our human and material resources,” Joanne Coppolino said shortly before police closed in. The 37-year-old San Jose “occupier and mom” sounded downright Keynesian during her daily visit to the camp. “We share goods and services and we take care of each other.”
Occupy San Jose may have resembled a disheveled homeless camp, barely hanging together by its fingernails. But Gil Villagran, an occupier from nearby San Jose State, where he teaches social work, saw a flourishing activist community beneath all that threadbare canvas.
“We are not a homeless shelter,” said Villagran. “We are a small society, demonstrating how the world should work.”
Commerce coursed through the camp, which consisted of as many as 40 full-time occupiers who spent the night and an additional 50 silent partners and angel investors (Code Pink stalwarts and soccer moms with big hearts) who kept the economic gears turning. Many of them now stand ready to support any future encampments, regardless of where they might pop up. It’s unclear how much, if any, money remains in the community treasury. But presumably any remaining cash donations are still secured at an undisclosed location not far from City Hall.
“We keep our donated cash in a lock-box at a lawyer’s office off-site,” said Daniel McCormick, a 20-year-old social-media consultant who hails from a “comfortable life in Willow Glen. My parents work hard. My dad’s a consultant, my mom’s a CPA.”
McCormick, who donated $600 of his own money to buy supplies for the camp, said, “One person has the key, but to take money out you need three signatures of committee members and it’s a hassle to get everyone over there at the same time. So the money just sits there.”
Much like the congressional impasse over the national budget, Occupy San Jose’s awkward — and at times marijuana-fueled — forays into grass-roots democracy sometimes hit a wall, McCormick said. “When we vote at our general assembly about what to do with the money, the people who are living comfortably at home come here and vote with us on how to spend the money. They’ll say, ‘You guys don’t need more money for tents.’ These are things we occupiers think we need, but we get outvoted.”
As encampments around the country were upended by SWAT teams throughout the week, San Jose’s relatively small living laboratory of microeconomics hung in there. Compared with its sister sites in Oakland and San Francisco, it was a small and relatively peaceful enclave, emboldened by donations and the occasional horn honk of a passing motorist.
Still, the division of labor was always on full display. Roy Sherrill, a bearded and disabled 47-year-old Oregonian who said his electronics manufacturing job was outsourced overseas, spent most days organizing the Occupy campaign online with his HP laptop, which got its charge from the cigarette lighter built into his $6,000 power wheelchair parked out front.
Now, just like millions of other Americans whose lives have been turned upside-down by financial hardships, Sherrill said he was in the market for new housing.
“We may just set up the camp someplace else,” he said, “and start over.”
Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689 or follow him at patmaymerc on Twitter.