About 2 months ago, I was wandering the pit of despair and intellectual ruin that is Facebook only to stumble upon a new protest who’s mission was to target Wall Street with one single goal. They left it open to the protesters what that goal would be. This way, people with different concerns might have been able to focus on something that could provide a path for greater changes without dividing people based on trivialities.
If protesters could concentrate on a single issue, they might be able to get congress to act. It was an open poll, and if I remember correctly, I either voted for “campaign finance reform” or “an end to corporate personhood.”
In retrospect, only concentrating on a single goal seems a bit foolish, but it made sense at the time. We felt like such a divided society, everyone with their own prideful opinions about how to fix our seemingly endless string of problems. It seemed no one could agree on anything. Concentrating on one demand seemed plausible, at least compared to the massive, but necessary task of reforming a government that has become so corrupt, it actually has the nerve to create secret committees where only lobbyist can comment.
Today, there isn’t just one demand, but thousands. Yes, they protest by chanting and holding signs, but they also have a schedule where groups discuss economics or political theory. They have a public library and manage to provide free meals for everyone. Why it actually sounds like a functioning society, doesn’t it?
They’re demands are both numerous and diverse, but they all agree on the problem. To quote former IMF official Jon Perkins, “Elected officials – including the President – no longer write the laws; the corporate lobbyists write and pass them through our elected officials, whose campaigns they finance.”
Their message has resonated with a vast majority of Americans who have suddenly and collectively become aware of the seriousness of the problem of government corruption. We have definitely crossed an invisible line of consciousness. Everyone and their grandma knows about how screwed things are. Sure, people used to just write it off, “oh, politicians are corrupt.” BUT NOW, you can really get them talking about it. It’s something people collectively are ready to do something about. Its amazing.
According to NBC News, “Sixty-seven percent of those who responded to a Quinnipiac University survey said they agreed with the Occupy Wall Street protesters” and “87 percent, agreed with the protesters’ right to camp out in Lower Manhattan, as long as they obeyed the law.”
The effect they are having is substantive among politicians as well. In a stunning (but largely ignored) story in Politico, the banks were “livid” that they weren’t receiving additional support from Democrats. The irrational complaints of politicians who just a few weeks ago asked, “Where are the jobs?” hypocritically ask the protesters, “Why Don’t You Get a Job?”
In short, at the risk of sounding overly romantic, this probably is one of the most democratic displays I’ve seen in my lifetime. So far, their commitment to independence, diversity and non-partisanship has allowed it to strengthen beyond the typical divide and conquer tactics that were used rather effectively on the Tea Party.
One final note, David Graeber, an activist and early organizer of OWS, has written a worthwhile history of the early days of the movement and is worth reading.
