The Old Is New again: Occupy and the Catholic Worker

by Ellen Euclide


The goals and values of OWS have not been hammered out yet and I don’t want to put words in their mouths.  I see the potential, though, for values and action plans to evolve in two directions.  One will continue to parallel the Catholic Worker and other social movements of the 1930s, the other will increase our reliance on government and placate Occupiers into believing the system reformed.

Zuccotti Park and other encampments right now are a beautiful experiment in alternative governance and community living.  The ideas are not new, but they have the potential to be revolutionary.  People from all walks of life and with varied motives and agendas have found a welcoming community ready to share tents, coffee and conversation.  They have found the healing realization that they are neither alone nor crazy in their struggles.  This welcoming hospitality and realization of connectedness mirrors the atmosphere that Catholic Worker houses strive to create in neighborhoods across the country.

In many ways, the occupiers’ example of alternative governance for their community also seems to follow the models of democracy espoused by the Catholic Worker and other anarchist and socialist uprisings and movements. 

The idea of personal responsibility and decision making on the most local level is not new, but it is radical.  From Chiapas to Paris, Barcelona to Boston, throughout history one can find examples of everyday people rediscovering democracy.   In the same way, the occupiers use working groups, consensus based general assemblies and open committee meetings in an effort to give everyone a voice.  The process used at occupy encampments is a direct rejection of the “representative” system of US politics and the power of secretive money exchanges.  The occupiers, like so many before them, have embraced a more open and direct, if more cumbersome and time consuming, way of getting things done. 

This is clearly in line with some of the early Catholic Worker philosophies.  Peter Maurin advocated for a society in which government was unnecessary because everyone helped one another and communities had the ability to sustain themselves.  Referred to with the often misused term “personalism,” his philosophy didn’t rely on government to own or redistribute wealth.  He envisioned a society in which everyone had the ability to provide for his or her self and the responsibility to help out those who’d fallen on hard times, as well as the duty to contribute to the provision of community needs.

Here is where Occupy faces a fork in the road.  Their current living situation provides us with a model of community awareness and personal responsibility which has the potential to continue as a personalist, community based solution.  Peter would have said they are “building the new within the shell of the old.”  But, are the selfish “American Values” we’ve been taught too pervasive to modify?   Is the old still strong enough to convince the occupiers to take the “realistic” path?

That path is the one where demands are issued that increase our dependence on government, and it is a potential path that has been and will continue to be debated over and over by Catholic Workers and others.  I have said that the model of Zuccotti is an example of an alternative to the system we are fed up with.  Imagine that instead of sharing extra sleeping bags, the occupiers instead asked for money which would be used to buy and fairly distribute sleeping bags.  The end result, everyone gets a sleeping bag, would not have changed.  The message, though, would be altered.  Their governance would be very much like the one they are protesting, albeit with a higher value placed on equality.

In the same way, the path of demanding taxes on the rich and better government programs for the poor would undermine the revolutionary nature of their movement.  Demanding that the government redistribute the money so unfairly earned by corporations would not truly solve the issue of criminal capitalism.  The issue is not just that we’ve lost; it’s that the system is set up to fail us.  Receiving a consolation prize does not erase the fact that you’ve lost, or that it was a con game to begin with.  It also takes the personal and community responsibility out of the equation.  The bankers would still win big at the expense of the 99%; we would just get a few bucks for our trouble. 

If the occupiers cease calling out the injustices, inequalities and rigged games of US democracy and capitalism and instead simply demand the rights to work, food and healthcare; they will cease to be revolutionary in the sense that aligns with the Catholic Worker. 

The revolution of the Catholic Worker, and the one they are trying on for size at Zuccotti, requires a revolution of the heart and a rejection of many values we’ve been taught all our lives.  At the same time, though, it is an amazingly simple embrace of natural human values.  These are the values that occupiers have found so life giving and empowering, to help one another, to have your voice heard, and to give and receive instead of taking and winning.  To rely on strangers, to sleep next to them in a cold park, to listen to them even when you disagree, these are things we’ve been taught to avoid.  Yet, occupiers across the country are realizing the beauty and power of doing just that.  Just as immigrants in Chicago, farmers in Spain, and unemployed sailors in New York did in the last century.  Just as early Christians, medieval pilgrims and Buddhist and Jain monks have realized for centuries.   

Many of these earlier movements faced violent resistance, others continued to have local influence and to change the lives of those they touched, even if their impact on political systems seemed small.  Still others left a mark that wasn’t obvious until much later.  Is the Occupy movement big enough to create mainstream change by existing as an example of an alternative?  Or will they settle for a consolation prize in the existing rigged game?  We can only wait and see; a movement that is rediscovering democracy certainly deserves a chance to evolve (and maybe some experienced Catholic Workers to help it along).

Ellen Euclide is a member of the Su Casa Catholic Worker--Pete's Place Community in Chicago.  She can be emailed at:  ellen.euc@gmail.com