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Politics & Government

(Video) Iowa Protesters Offer Model To Occupy 2012

Organizers hope their Occupy The Caucus protests are the 'least organized' demonstrations around the presidential campaign.

Heading into the Iowa caucuses Tuesday night, Occupy Des Moines had logged upwards of 50 arrests after a week of protesting every presidential candidate and were already claiming victory.

Yet, the true test of whether organizers achieved their goals won’t come with results of the caucuses Tuesday night. Rather, it’ll be later in the month when candidates move out of Iowa and on to other early voting states.

“We’ve done our job,” said David Goodner, an Occupy Des Moines member and organizer. “We’ll keep at it and everything but it’s time to take this thing out to New Hampshire, and Nevada and South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states.”

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Goodner said this is one model for how Occupy Wall Street can take the movement into the 2012 election year to target what they say is corporate control over the political system.

The activists involved in arranging the Occupy the Caucus effort hope their efforts in a week of protests are the least organized Occupy protest around the presidential campaign. Goodner said their hope is that demonstrations in Iowa will inspire Occupiers to pick up the mantle in like New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida – not only around primary voting, but also at the national conventions this summer.

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There has already been talk of demonstrations around the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, which has some Occupy Des Moines members excited. But nationally there is also a sense the atmosphere might breed a situation not unlike the chaotic protests at the DNC in 1968.

Occupy Des Moines also hoped to utilize the electoral process to throw curveballs at the nominating process Tuesday night.

“Occupy Des Moines and the Occupy the Caucus Campaign [encouraged] people who feel they want to participate in the Iowa Caucuses to go uncommitted as a vote of no confidence in the candidates and the system,” said Stephen Toothman, an Occupy DSM media team member.

On Monday, Ed Fallon announced his “endorsements” in an email. Fallon, a 98.3 WOW FM radio talk show host and central member of Occupy Des Moines, hoped to get people to caucus as “uncommitted” on the Democratic side. “[President] Obama needs our support to win in November,” Fallon said. “He needs to know that we’re unhappy, and that we intend to hold him accountable.”

Democratic caucus-goers did manage to get the votes for at least several uncommitted delegates for the Polk County convention. The last time uncommitted delegates made a dent in the national conventions was in 1992, and “uncommitted” held the majority in the Iowa Democratic caucuses in the 1970’s.

The Iowa Democratic Party and Team Obama was prepared to stack the deck against "uncommitteds": a special message from the president to everyone at the caucuses, repeated text messages and email blasts, more than 350,000 phone calls by volunteers. Not to mention the long-standing caucus rules requiring uncommitted voters to reach a threshold to have their vote counted, which was discussed at the prominent Democratic blog Bleeding Heartland.

On the Republican side, Fallon had called for people to vote for one of the “less extreme” candidates who were dismissed by much of the media: Fred Karger, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul or Buddy Roemer. Roemer is the only candidate to openly back the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The 'People's Caucus'

Occupy the Caucus kicked off their activism on Dec. 27 at a building they rented in the East Village of downtown Des Moines with the “People’s Caucus.” More than 250 people came, mostly from Iowa but many from other states as well. It the biggest gathering for Occupy Des Moines since 400 showed up for the first night of their protest on Oct. 9. Within a month Occupy Des Moines had already begun planning on how they could have an impact on their first-in-the-nation caucuses. 

The Occupy protesters got back together at 10 a.m. on Dec. 28 to begin planning direct actions. Over the next two days, as they demonstrated at Mitt Romney and Ron Paul’s campaign offices, and at the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters.

Two dozen were arrested for refusing to leave private property during a bus tour over the weekend they called “Occupy the Future” --  Occupy protesters rented three buses to haul themselves around to each of the presidential candidate’s headquarters to demonstrate.

At Michele Bachmann’s HQ in Urbandale, Bachmann herself was currently at the offices when they arrived. Two juveniles were arrested, as were several others, for refusing to leave the property. They moved on to Rick Perry’s offices in West Des Moines, where only one staffer hid inside. The Occupiers would then stop by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum’s offices in Urbandale; each with many volunteers and staffers working inside.

Occupy Des Moines members said they sent letters to each of the campaigns requesting to formally sit down with them to discuss their policy concerns. After learning on New Year’s Eve that Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a controversial indefinite detention provision, the protesters decided to spend their last couple of days trying to reach the Democratic National Committee. They requested to meet with DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz while she was in town. After that effort failed, on Monday 12 were arrested for refusing to leave the DNC’s “War Room” at the Renaissance Hotel.

Norm Sterzenbach, executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, told Patch they’ve offered to send the state chair, Sue Dvorsky, to meet with Occupy Des Moines and hear their concerns. Meanwhile Republicans have been less receptive.

Many voting "uncommitted" at the Democratic caucus did so in large part because of disagreement over the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA.

No Stranger To Aggravating Candidates, Including Democrats

The people involved with Occupy Des Moines are no stranger to challenging Democrats. A number of them have worked with Iowa CCI, a group of progressive activists that worked alongside Iowa Democrats in 2011, while also earning condemnation by the IDP.

They also were the group of hecklers who got Romney to declare in Des Moines, famously, “corporations are people.” Indeed, it is difficult to visit an Occupy Wall Street group anywhere in the country without seeing a homemade sign refering to that comment.

Fallon, who helped direct the “People’s Caucus” kickoff event on Dec. 27, has been with Occupy Des Moines since the very first night. Fallon is now a radio talk show host, but he spent 14 years in the state legislature after he defeated an incumbent Democrat in the primary. In 2000, he endorsed Ralph Nader over Al Gore for the presidential election, and he challenged U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa) in 2008 in the Democratic primary.

When he stepped to the stage on Dec. 27, he joked that he was a “recovering politician.”

Protesters said despite not being able to actually meet with the current politicians, the candidates or their senior staff, they’ve seen a change in what is being discussed by candidates. Occupiers can’t help but feel their message is at the very least being echoed in a national dialogue over income inequality. Candidates like Paul and Santorum saying they were sympathetic to what the Occupy movement is angry about, while Obama has started refering to the "99 percent."

With all the media attention on Iowa that the Occupiers took advantage of, they’re hopeful they’ll have some influence on other Occupy movements around the country.

“I think people feel that because they’re in Des Moines, they feel they have a voice, because there is this much attention from all directions pointed at this very place at this time of year, every four years,” a protester from Des Moines named Tyler, who declined to disclose his last name, said. Tyler believed the weather, which was abnormally warm and dry for an Iowa winter, certainly helped with turnout as well.

They’ve also believe they’ve been successful in disrupting candidate’s ability to control their message.

Goodner pointed to an event at the Iowa statehouse, when he and a few other Occupiers “” Newt Gingrich. The event was supposed to be a press conference about Gingrich’s latest endorsements, but instead became a story about protesters disrupting him.

“We’d like to see this replicated around the country,” Tyler said. “We’re the first; we’re making a lot of noise here. We want to see that continue.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified the site of the Democratic National Convention.

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