Occupy and 天安门(Tian'anmen)

The Tian’anmen square protests in China in 1989 was one of the largest political protest movements in human history. After studying the scale of those protests, movements like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement seem almost like a joke. However, most people don’t know all the facts behind the Tian’anmen square protests, in high school history books it is referred to as “an event which signified that communist governments could still exist in the modern day era,” which doesn’t exactly present the full picture.

The protests started when students went to the square to memorialize the death of a popular political leader. However, they soon found themselves advocating for democratic reforms in the Chinese government. The square (which was designed to hold 1 million people) became rapidly filled with students from the surrounding area.

However, with so many protesters, the movement began to factionalize; some groups thought that they should be willing to concede some points to the government to get other, while some groups thought that the government should give in to all of their demands. As the months went by, the protesters became frustrated, and many of them left the square to return to classes.  However, the square was still full of new people who came to Beijing from the surrounding areas. These people were excited to continue the protest.

Gradually, the leaders of the movement began to realize that they were losing their government supporters (at the time, the government was composed of both reformers and conservative members. The reformers had the most sway at the time of the protests.) Because the students were unable to come to a consensus among themselves, they had difficulty presenting a unified position to the government. Therefore, they began to start up a vote to leave the square, as they did not feel that remaining in the square was the best direction for the movement.

However, their democratic ways backfired. Every day they brought up the vote to leave the square; and every day the vote was nearly unanimous: the protesters would stay.

The problem lay in the fact that the protesters who felt the best option was to leave the square simply left the square. Therefore, whenever there was a vote on the issue, the only protesters voting were those who actively felt remaining in the square was the best decision. Even though all the leaders agreed that leaving the square was the best route, because of the nature of extremist formation, they were unable to make the correct decision.

And what of the Occupy Movement? Well, the American Government isn’t going to be sending in troops to stop them, but then again, the occupy movement doesn’t have 300,000 people protesting in one mass. Modern protest movements aren’t won by numbers, but by mobility. Using communication technologies to create an impossible to hit target has enabled the Occupy movement to become far more dynamic. Perhaps it’s better off, then, that protests are ruled by ideas rather than places. Occupy will no longer hold a physical place, but will certainly Occupy the idea of protest movements in the 21^st century.