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The revolution will be televised, streamed and uploaded

What is the role of video in the Occupy movement? Is it to bear witness? Is it to spread a political message? Is it to put events into a historical context? Is it an enticement to become part of something bigger than yourself that has helped the Occupy Wall Street movement grow into a global occupation?

OWS September 23, 2011 – The First Week in Zuccotti Park, NYC - Photos: Courtesy of Emon Hassan

It is all these things.  The role video is playing in the Occupy movement should be closely watched because it may just challenge the role mainstream media plays in today’s digital, 24/7, tuned-in world.

No news anchor’s commentary could have had the same impact the actual shocking footage of protestors being assaulted by police with pepper-spray had on those sitting at home in front of televisions, at work in front of computers or in cafés on mobile devices.  And the world sat up and took notice.

Video seen in The New York Times showing female protestors sprayed by the police

Who controls the narrative?

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is no longer true.  It will not only be televised, it will be live-streamed and broadcast. We’ve seen this in both the Occupy movement and Arab Spring.  Paul Levinson, a media expert quoted in the Occupy Wall Street Wikipedia entry and author of several books including “New New Media”, shared his thoughts with me on the role of video in the Occupy movement. “I think video has been absolutely crucial, in fact the single most crucial media aspect of Occupy Wall Street.” Joshua Van Praag of OccupyTVNY.org agrees. “I think we can’t underplay the extraordinary influence video has had on the growth of this movement; much of which has being helped by the live stream.”

When I began writing this article, Global Revolution’s Brooklyn offices had just been raided by the New York Police Department (NYPD). Global Revolution has broadcasted live video from the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests since they began on September 17th, 2011. Within the first month, their live stream had served video to three million viewers according to Nigel Parry of Global Revolution.  I spoke with Parry a few days after the raid, curious to know when Global Revolution would be back up and running.  He informed me they had never stopped streaming. Their decentralized model had allowed them to continue offering live streams from around the world even after the raid. “In the end, we can do this from laptops connected to the Internet from anywhere around the world. The Global Revolution is unstoppable,” Parry said.

During the Zuccotti Park eviction on November 15, 2011, Van Praag recounted to me that NYPD asked the media to identify themselves. When they did, they were escorted away by the NYPD. The only information leaving Zuccotti Park that night was the live stream. Bloomberg’s network and various other networks picked it up and rebroadcast the night’s events to their audiences. The slogan, “You can not evict an idea whose time has come” was created that evening as a tagline to accompany the live stream to put the protests and eviction into context. It quickly became a meme.

OWS Zuccotti Park tent encampment - Photo: Courtesy of Emon Hassan

Putting events into a context, whether it is the evictions of tent encampments, flash mob rallies or planned marches, is important to the Occupy movement. The Occupy movement is often under attack for the lack of clarity of the OWS message and Van Praag clearly believes the battle for who controls the narrative is a number one priority.  The carefully produced and edited short videos found on OccupyTVNY.org are examples of Occupy defining the narrative.  Their goal is to interpret raw footage and match it with citizen journalists explaining the events or conducting interviews. Van Praag sees OccupyTVNY.org as a form of advocacy journalism: “We don’t try and maintain a rigid pretense of objectivity that I think is essentially disingenuous in mainstream media. The OccupyTVNY.org videos are collaborative and adhere to the founding principles that define this movement, which are equality and mutual respect and transparent structure in which the major decisions are made by consensus.” 

Van Praag says there is no room in the movement for those seeking glory as individual filmmakers; though currently, fees for any raw footage licensed from OccupyTVNY.org.org by shows such as ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ on CurrentTV or networks like Al Jazeera go to the shooter directly responsible. Van Praag would like to see this change eventually and be organized in a way that would be more collective and self-sustaining in order to offset the financial burdens they carry as an organization.  OccupyTVNY.org shares space with the New York City General Assembly (NYCGA), the governing body of OWS but while writing this piece it was announced on their website that their offices were temporarily closed. Van Praag says funding is very low and filmmakers must use their own equipment, which is often confiscated or damaged during filming. Completed pieces by OccupyTVNY.org are available to be freely reposted as long as it isn’t for profit through a Creative Commons license.  The Guardian in London, the Gothamist, Huffington Post, Link TV and other blogs and news sources have posted videos created by OccupyTVNY.org.

Occupying a foreclosed home - a short film produced by OccupyTVNY.org

Going global

The rapid viral spread of online videos has helped take the Occupy movement global. On November 17, 2011 the Global Revolution split its channel into a New York Channel and an International Channel and use split screens at times to accommodate the live feeds.  OWS news broadcasts and television shows are popping up on Public Access Channels across the countries and many people in the Occupy Movement believe that OWS has pulled back a curtain and revealed that mainstream media is dead.

Activist and filmmaker, Dustin Slaughter, has been arrested twice by police; once for “foreclosing” on a Wells Fargo account and once during an Occupy Philadelphia eviction. He spoke with me about how crucial he thinks video and photography are to the Occupy movement. “This movement has legitimized citizen journalism and has laid bare the reality that mainstream media is, in a certain way, obsolete. Citizen journalism drives the news now. ‘Amateur’ video and photography tell the truth in a way major media outlets cannot, because these outlets have a bottom line to meet and their first priority isn’t truth-telling but feeding an irrelevant profit system.” NYPD estimates over 30,000 protestors rallied at the Brooklyn Bridge on November 17, 2011 and 700 arrests were made. Van Praag was among those arrested.  He recounts that day:  “I was live streaming and as news spread across social media, I watched the numbers climb on my laptop. Before I knew it, 50,000 people were watching the stream. “ 

OWS protest Brooklyn Bridge - Photo: Courtesy of 99% film

Levinson blasts the NYPD’s behavior. “Global Revolution was arrested as part of a systematic assault on the First Admendment. No one wants to look bad on camera so I’m not at all surprised that the police arrest not only the people that are in the street doing the video, but that they are now moving to the next step, the people that are streaming video.  Before this current age, when people have video capability in their hands, it was the police’s word against the people they were victimizing. I’ve seen videos of people trying to close their bank accounts and what else is new, you can’t close your bank account, so we saw coverage of people being escorted out of banks.  There was video of the pepper spraying out in California. A lunatic that did it as casually as if he was watering his garden. The most recent, which I thought was quite breathaking, was what Tim Pool did with his TimCast here in New York on New Year’s Eve.” 

UC Davis Occupy protesters sprayed repeatedly by Police

Watchdog role

These “witnessing” of events by video has a powerful impact on public opinion and plays an important watchdog role.  Whether or not “hits” and “views” can be empirically shown to translate into direct actions is yet to be seen, but mainstream media as well as politicians are influenced by what holds the public’s attention.  The filmmaker-activist knows this and a viral video viewed by millions of people is an activist’s Oscar. 

Just as Van Praag believes OccupyTVNY’s work helps define the Occupy movement, many filmmakers are also attempting to put the Occupy movement in a historical context through longer form projects such as feature length documentaries. Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites are making a documentary called “99%”. It recently got a lot of coverage in the mainstream media because of the crowdsourced aspect of their film. I spoke with Audrey and she explains to me why this crowdsourced method made sense to her, “It just seemed natural to set up the film as a kind of parallel experiment to the OWS movement.  Our film, in many ways, mirrors their collaborative ethos, but at the same time we do have a hierarchy and we do have experienced filmmakers guiding the process.  Directors learn to be very self-assured and almost dictatorial in their control of their productions, so this is a very different way of working.  Extraordinarily challenging, I should say. But I wanted to try this experiment, I believe that in the end it will be quite worth it, and I love doing something that I never thought I would do; a collaborative film.  ” 

OWS NYC March - Photo: Courtesy of 99% film

Perhaps mainstream media was, as Parry phrases it, “slow to realize or acknowledge the depth of popular feeling and the enduring nature of the movement.” After all he goes on to explain: “The first week’s commercial media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement was close to nil. The still-sparse second week of commercial media coverage ranged from dismissive to outright mockery. Even the alternative media was slow to pick up the story. In this same two week period we served almost three million live video streams to almost 700,000 people—and 68 percent of our viewers were based in the in US.” 

OWS Oakland rally - Photo: Courtesy of 99% film

Big Brother in full reverse

Citizen journalists holding up cell phones is a common sight at OWS events. As of writing this article, when I type “Occupy”, “Occupy New York” and “OWS” into YouTube’s search bar, the number of videos that come up range from 151,000 to 58,000 films in that order.  One video of the UC Davis pepper spray incident alone had 2,446,865 views.  When I search UC Davis Pepper Spray in YouTube over 1300 videos come up.  These numbers are an indication of the public’s interest in OWS and most of the OWS videos posted on YouTube are uploaded and shared by average citizens and activists, not actual filmmakers. 

Corey Olgilvie is directing “Occupy The Movie” a short film series scheduled to end in a feature documentary.  One of the short films on the website is a tutorial entitled “How to Film a Revolution.” I asked him about the impetus behind the video. “If you watch any 2011 protest footage from the Middle-East, Europe, Russia, or America, you’ll see swarms of people filming on their phones and small cameras, right along with the protesters.  Sometimes there is a citizen journalist for every protester.  We can’t underestimate the impact this has on modern day dissent and surveillance.  We no longer need ‘good media coverage’ to get our message out, we will film it, stream it, share it, and archive it forever using our own tools. ‘How to Film a Revolution’ was my attempt to bolster this liberating phenomenon.” 

How to Film a Revolution - a tutorial - Occupy the Movie

The ACLU dedicates an entire page to the right to protest and the First Amendment. Ogilvie concludes by saying: “In an age where our liberties seem to vanish by the day, the liberty of us having near total surveillance over the state should be protected, enhanced and refined.  It is Orwell’s Big Brother thesis in full reverse, and we’re much better off because of it.” 

“How to Film a Revolution” reminds those shooting to turn their cameras to match standard horizontal formatting and it warns shooters to be cautious and stay aware of any violence around them. It even provides tips on how to cover an event with multiple cameras.  But in truth, the level of “professionalism” of a video doesn’t really matter when the subject matter reveals a poignant and captivating moment such as when Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas confronted NYPD on October 15, 2011. The video immediately went viral; perhaps, because it touched a human communality higher than even the objectives of the OWS.

Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas reminds NYPD that protesters are US citizens without guns

Many people I spoke with for this piece are passionate activists and they drew comparisons more than once between the Occupy movement and activism during the sixties, a time known for powerful yet peaceful protest. The brutality by the “state” caught in Arab Spring videos and the police arrests videos of Occupy protesters sometimes blur in people’s minds but they are not to be confused.  Despite the bad choices of law enforcement and government officials in many cities, Occupy protesters have been able to gather and get their message out there for the most part. And people have flocked to join the movement.

Vermont filmmaker Jon Erickson’s short film “Portrait of Occupy” reveals the true diversity of the types of people who gather and protest as part of the Occupy movement. For those not living near a city or town where Occupy events go on, the video may open some eyes to the fact Occupiers are not just college age youth but people of many ages and races, in suits and in Birkenstocks.  I asked him about shooting the video and he said: “When I was there everything was so beautiful. I was embraced by love, knowledge, and an indescribable energy. I let my surroundings inspire me. It’s easy to get lost inside the camera. Sometimes I forget what I’m looking at is real, and standing directly in front of me. I had a few interactions with police but they were rather minor. The world is in need of a revolution.” Erickson’ film is very alluring, proving that video can be a powerful battle cry to entice people to be part of something bigger than themselves. There is no “violence” in his video. There are no crowds driven to avoid or resigned to confront the police. The footage depicts an average day in Occupy NYC where citizens of the world join together to stand up for what they believe in.

I asked him what had inspired him to drive down from Vermont to make the film. His answer might just explain why his film does such a good job at capturing that intangible human desire to create a better place on earth not just for ourselves but for future generations. 

He answered: “I am in love with a girl who lives in Manhattan.”

The simple things in life - “peace, love and understanding.” These things are not limited to the 1 percent or owned by the 99 percent.  Many complain the political message and demands of OWS aren’t clear enough. What do they want exactly, people ask? 

I say watch a video and decide for yourself.  It’s a free world. At least for now.

The many faces of the Occupy Movement

 

 

 

Tags: 99%, activism, advocacy journalism, arab spring, broadcast, citizen journalism, collaboration, creative commons, documentary makers, filmmaker, global revolution, internet, journalism, license, live stream, mainstream media, media, movement, occupation, occupy, occupy wall street, photographers, protest, revolution, television, video, watchdog,

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