Occupy Wall Street’s anarchist aesthetics alienated both the public and its own members.

Evidence

While the “99%” slogan resonated, OWS’s aesthetics alienated many Americans. Gallup polls showed tepid public sentiment toward the movement, which also struggled from internal discord. Graeber encouraged anarchistic governance structures, which hampered decision-making. The incessant drum circles irritated both city officials and fellow protesters. Despite a compromise limiting drumming to two two-hour sessions, rogue musicians continued late into the night. “Two hours is too little,” drummer Elijah Moses told The Wall Street Journal. “There’s too much time in a day for us to only have two hours in a damn revolution, you know?” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 220

Categorization

• CANDY: The drummer defiantly refusing to limit revolution drumming is a comic, tweetable detail — drum circles as uncompromisable revolutionary praxis.
• XREF: connects to: Occupy Wall Street was explicitly modeled on Tahrir Square — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 259