A New Occupation

Nate Roybal is part of the 99 percent. A 24-year-old salesman for a Mountain View telecommunications company, Roybal has unpaid student loans for a degree he never completed. His income keeps him just above the poverty line but doesn’t allow him to pay his bills. For nearly two weeks, Roybal has spent his days working a full shift before driving his car to San Jose to sleep in a tent.

Along with other students, day laborers, retirees and people who have simply given up hope of finding a job, Roybal is part of the loosely organized Occupy San Jose, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is rallying the disgruntled and disenfranchised against the rich in cities across the country.

“There is something wrong with this country when people work 40 to 60 hours a week and can’t afford health care or even to move out of their parents’ home,” Roybal says, taking a drag off a cigarette minutes before an occupation meeting is set to start. “A lot of people say ‘that’s just the way it is.’ I’m trying to change that.”

But despite giving off the appearance of growth—a rally of 200 people gathered Sunday in front of City Hall to air their grievances over a system they say unjustly rewards the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, speculative banks and corporations looking to influence elected officials—Occupy San Jose finds itself at a turning point.

The group had five tents lining the sidewalk of City Hall plaza for a week, when between five and 20 people would sleep to the sounds of sirens and passing pedestrians each night. Yet the threat of citations and arrests has pushed some of the protesters off city property and up three blocks to the Peace and Justice Center on South Seventh Street. Only a few people chose to remain at City Hall the night of the group’s largest rally. Five people have been cited by police, according to one protestor.

Hundreds have been arrested in protests in New York, which began Sept. 17 on the streets of Manhattan. Since that time, more than 900 occupation groups are estimated to have sprouted up in other cities across the country. But cohesion and consistency of message has been an issue.

New York’s occupation group put out a declaration that ticked off a broad set of objections. The list touched on everything from foreclosures, bank bailouts, agricultural manipulation, the mistreatment of animals, and labor negotiations with unions to exorbitant student loans, a broken healthcare system, wars abroad, corporate donations, unsafe products not being recalled and a national commitment to colonialism. The list goes on.

But some local groups, such as the people pushing for a referendum on San Jose’s pot club program as well as voter registration gatherers, are hooking on to the local occupation movement for their own benefit.

“These are people who are taking advantage of the Occupy Wall Street organization. They don’t represent the view of us,” says Peter Brown, a marketing professional who supports Occupy San Jose. “The Tea Party got preempted by the Republican Party, and that’s what we want to avoid.”

Unlike the Tea Party, which scared off many yet gained political clout with its red-in-the-face rhetoric, Occupy San Jose doesn’t have the demographics of a 4-H Club potluck. Its diverse members seem like genuinely happy people when not talking politics. The rub comes up when discussing money, power and greed.

“There are a lot of demands, and they’re growing,” says 41-year-old Martin Truong, who is involved in both the San Francisco and San Jose occupation movements. “The criticism that we’re unfocused is propaganda.”

Members of Occupy San Jose, which has several take-charge coordinators but no true leader, say the biggest boon to the nationwide occupation is that, so far, there seem to be no behind-the-scenes moneymen. While people in the Tea Party were happy to talk about being mad as hell, few seemed to know they were being prodded by political action committees funded by right-wing millionaires and billionaires, such as the Koch brothers.

“The Tea Party was Astroturf,” Truong says. “This is grassroots.”

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