I really want to like the Occupy Wallstreet movement, but I can't figure out what it is about. I thought I had a handle on it last week, after reading one earnest website, but then I read a few other websites that said that they were the official website for the movement and the thing morphed again. I talked to friends who attended the movement, and I walked away more confused than when I started.
If the protesters want to make a change, they have to pick ONE problem. Maybe two closely related problems, but certainly not a thousand. Sure, if you don't limit your demands, you'll get a big crowd, because everyone has a problem. But if you don't narrow it down to one problem, then politicians won't know what problem has to get fixed. Your message gets watered down. Nobody with any power will align themselves with you, because they won't know what you're for and against.
I'm tired of people telling me that movements always start as diffuse, confused, leaderless, message-less mobs, because that's not true. I'm pretty sure that MLK knew what he wanted.
A movement needs leadership. A movement isn't about conversation; it's about getting things done. It has to be hierarchical and organized. Without organization, the movement is not only inefficient, but it is endanager of getting manipulated by other groups with better organization. If Occupy Wallstreet is really supposed to be something new, then they need to reach out to other groups and look for commonalities, but not let them run the show.
After there's leadership, a unified message, a plan for politicians to rectify the problem, then they must pressure politicians to make that change. They need to go to Washington, DC or the state capitals. They need to show politicians that there will be no way that they will get re-elected without supporting their policy. They need to show politicians that they will seriously gum up the status quo, if their demands aren't met.
Alright, let's just say that they main problem is that the top 1% of the country isn't getting taxed enough. That's fine. Let's get the facts straight then. The top 1% of the country means everyone making more than $590,000 per year. By the way, 99% of the people who work on Wall Street don't earn that much money. Not even close. So, you have to figure out who is in that 1% (think — Jay Z, Steve Jobs, Oprah, Tom Cruise, the CEO for Staples, Katie Couric). So, maybe the protest should be positioned in Hollywood and outside corporate headquarters. After you determine what the right tax rate should be, then you explain why and get on the cable news shows to convince other people why this is a good plan. You show that a good number of voters are on your side through big protests, petitions, and big demonstrations of support. Then, maybe, just maybe, change will happen.
Making real change is very, very hard to do in this country. Our system was designed to work slowly and incrementally. Even if you do all these necessary, boring steps, there's no guarantee that change will happen. But without some organization, Occupy Wallstreet is just a big street party. (Not that I have a problem with a good street party.)
Apt. 11d 
Not that social and economic change happens easily in Israel, but you might look at this summer’s protests (mostly about affordable housing, but also encompassing income gaps) and recent government decisions: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4133108,00.html
Still a long way to go, but movement from the tent cities and protests toward specific policy changes.
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The first episode of Prohibition corresponds with your point pretty well. (What they need is a wedge issue! A single cause groups! And possibly shady or at least morally dubious leadership.)
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And possibly shady or at least morally dubious leadership.
I’m not looking for a new job at the moment, but thanks for thinking of me.
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I was there yesterday, and unfortunately, you do get the feeling of it being an anarchist encampment. Super G hates it when I say this, but there are an awful lot of dreadlocked, pierced, tattooed young white kids there, and I just don’t think they’re doing much for any serious cause (whatever that serious cause might actually be).
I really wish that some economist would team up with them and help them draft some legitimate “demands”. I also want to like them, but I agree that until they ask for something specific, no one has any reason at all to take action.
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laura, you and I have switched positions through the last two weeks. Last week, I was thinking “they should really be in Albany/DC (i.e., legislative body) making demands about taxes. Now I’m thinking the symbolism of Wall Street and the cacophony of demands actually helps the movement speak for a variety of different people voicing a variety of different grievances.
I think a leader could undermine, rather than further, this movement (for better or for worse), given the dearth of left and right-wingers who are unsullied by previous statements, tainted by being in office, or whose wealth might make them look hypocritical. And there ARE movements that have had some success without leaders, the Egyptian Spring (which, at least, led to Mubarak’s resignation although not the promised democracy) being one of them.
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Yeah, I could go either way about where they are actually putting their bodies. There might be something symbolic about sitting at Wall Street. It’s unique. But their voices have to be pointed towards a political body, fi they want change to happen.
And, yeah, they lost my support this last week, because I couldn’t figure out what it was about. When I pressed my friends who went to the rally to tell me what the main demand was, they couldn’t tell me.
I’m still not sure how much change is happening in Egypt, though it did get rid of Mubarak. Egypt also had people who had been tortured by its leaders and were living really, terrible lives. They also had a more specific goal than the OW people.
I liked the OW Facebook page. Not sure if it is the official OW Facebook page or not, but it claims to be. Today, they said that they aren’t a left oriented group and that they embrace people from the right, too. Um, if you are from the right, then, by definition, you prefer lower taxes and laissez faire economics. So, so, so confused.
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Well, many people on the right are opposed to bailouts. Indeed, just to refresh everyone’s memory, the majority of congressional Republicans voted against TARP; it was passed with Democratic votes. So in that sense the OW people could make common cause with the right.
Just to be clear, I think both tea party Republicans and OW protestors are generally crazy, and that the bank bailouts are the reason we have a Great Recession rather than another Great Depression, 9% unemployment rather than 25% unemployment, etc.
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“Today, they said that they aren’t a left oriented group and that they embrace people from the right, too. Um, if you are from the right, then, by definition, you prefer lower taxes and laissez faire economics.”
If your big issue is Wall Street and DC being in bed, then laissez faire would be a huge improvement over Goldman Sachs alumni running the country (with very mediocre results).
There are actually many economic issues where lefties and righties sing out of the same hymnal (farm subsidies, Kelo, banking bailout, picking winners and losers among specially chosen firms and industries, etc.). Differences emerge mainly when you start talking about solutions or particular examples (Solyndra, anyone?). An evil conservative like me would think that government enmeshment with the economy is innately ineffective and corrupting. As P.J. said (I paraphrase), if buying and selling is going to be legislated, then the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators. The more the government attempts to run the economy, the more corruption and sclerosis we will see both within corporations and the government itself. To cry out that the government is corrupted by corporations but at the same time to demand more power for that very same government calls to mind the old quote about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I haven’t been following the “Occupy X” movement closely, but how has Obama figured in their messaging? Are they attacking him, defending him or trying to woo him back from the dark side?
(By the way, I think the feds are pretty much hamstrung from the get go in regulation, especially Wall Street regulation. The people who regulate the bankers (Barney Frank comes to mind) aren’t nearly as smart as the bankers, so the bankers are able to run circles around them, as in the very predictable $5 debit fee debacle. It’s like Elmer Fudd facing off against Bugs Bunny–you know who is going to win every time.)
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P.J. was P.J. O’Rourke. Sorry.
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I was there yesterday, and unfortunately, you do get the feeling of it being an anarchist encampment.
See, that actually makes me hopeful (whereas that Occupy Wall Street posting Laura mentions, in which someone involved with the protests makes the claim that they aren’t solely a “left” group, doesn’t). I think I may be coming around to thinking that anarchist/participatory popular action is where the left needs to be right now. Perhaps we can attribute it to the Tea Party; they’ve managed to move the goalposts of ideological discourse in the country at the present time, making the insurgent, populist model (however authentic or otherwise) seem plausible. Or perhaps it’s a general sense of weariness with a political structure that makes real necessary changes so enormously costly and difficult. Tim Burke had a great post a while back on this point; I’ve linked to it before, but I’ll link to it again, because it’s a good diagnosis of how much all of us, as educated members of the “political class,” regularly miss out on how alienating our talk about “making the system work” is to those on the outside of it.
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I’m remembering the final scene from Animal Farm, where the farm animals look into the window of the farm house where the pigs are enjoying the company of humans, their alleged class enemy.
“No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Likewise, you’d find it very difficult to say where Goldman Sachs ends and the Treasury Department begins.
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The pierced, dread-locked white kids may really be the only ones who CAN camp out for weeks at a time. They’re white, so the cops will leave them alone. They’re anarchists, so they’re the least affected by pressures to conform (the suits yelling at them to go home), and they’re kids, so they don’t have to be home by 3pm to meet the school bus. (Heck, I should send them some $ for doing the sit-in work I used to do 20 years ago. Is it wrong to outsource your protest?!) In any case, the numbers of protesters at OWS swell from 5pm-10pm and on week-ends, when folks get off work and join in.
On the other hand, those same kids have learned enough from their women’s studies, Africana studies, film studies, etc. classes to know that social movements of the past got caught out on their own doctrinaire single-issue causes. Didn’t feminism supposedly “fail” because it was “just a bunch of middle-class white women” who failed to take into consideration that different groups have different needs and causes? I think kids have learned that you have to be pluralist to have the critical mass necessary to effect real change.
Finally, it’s worth remembering that a fair number of the folks moving and shaking on this one are grass-roots organizers and have been putting in the day-to-day slog for little or no salary. Some of them are involved in constructive projects that are trying to allow for real democracy to take hold here in New York City. See, for example, the participatory budgeting project in NYC (and Chicago and Toronto): http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/
Finally, Wall Street is much better for a protest than Hollywood: the symbolism is much more clear, there are a lot of cheap buses that folks can take from near Midwest and major East Coast cities to come in and support the protest from time to time, it’s more accessible by subway/commuter rail because of the well-developed public transit, and there are lots of useful amenities close by: UPS store for mail, Kinko’s for copies, food, etc. The only thing Hollywood would have going for it is that the warm weather might keep the tent city going a bit longer.
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So, Christiana, you’re saying that degrees in Africana and women’s studies aren’t useless: they allow you to run an effective protest when your degree doesn’t get you a job? Talk about money well spent!
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I have to admit, y81, I’m in the camp of those who don’t think any degree is worthless, as long as the graduate can apply skills and insight from his or her coursework toward contributing to positive change in the world. I’ve never been one for the college-as-trade school argument, and I say that after having put myself through college (my parents didn’t pay a dime) and double-majoring in two “useless” areas of study. So I am obviously biased. (OTOH, I’ve also never — thankfully — been in the unemployment line, unlike my buddies who went to law and engineering school or got MBAs … :-))
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I don’t think that feminism failed. I think that some feminists failed to achieve some of their goals.
Lots of single interest groups fail, but that doesn’t mean the converse is true. It doesn’t mean that amorphous, hundred-purpose groups work.
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Somebody needs to lead a “We’ve Got to Do Something” singalong:
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My dad would have loved OWS; he was at NYU in the late 60s and bragged about hanging around with Mark Rudd.
Michael Lewis likes OWS: http://crooksandliars.com/tina-dupuy/michael-lewis-ows-how-reform-happens
(I just started reading Moneyball–good stuff.)
If OWS gets regular people talking and thinking about how the top 1% of people are exploiting the remaining 99%, I say it’s all good. I’m basically a hippie, though, so what do I know?
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President Obama is coming to town tomorrow. Gov. Perry on Friday. I get to be a swing state voter again. Whee.
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“…it’s more accessible by subway/commuter rail because of the well-developed public transit, and there are lots of useful amenities close by: UPS store for mail, Kinko’s for copies, food, etc.”
UPS, Kinkos, use the McDonald’s restrooms, communicate with the outside world on your iphone–that’s my kind of anti-corporate protest.
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“UPS, Kinkos, McDonald’s . . . .”
It’s funny, my wife and I, like Wendy, think of ourselves as hippies (or hippies manques, anyway), but the part we liked was the authenticity part, as in “the revolution will not be televised,” etc. That ethos is totally gone, so we are left to make our own revolution at home.
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Are you trying to say your basement is full of gro-lights?
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MH,
No basement in their swanky Manhattan pad, I assume.
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Speaking of which, I have a mild interest in container gardening. Searching for books on “container gardening” on Amazon gets you very quickly to how-to guides on growing your own illegal agricultural products.
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I think the demands of the protesters at least what I have made out from looking on the internet are pretty simple. They want jobs that pay a living wage, debt relief from student loans, and affordable health care. These are pretty simple demands. They are not ones that the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress are interested in addressing any more than the Republicans.
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