As the initial day of the "Occupy Wall Street" protest approached, I was waiting with anticipation, hoping that this time, because of several weeks of planning before the September 17th start of the occupation-style protest, the leaders of the protest would be able to help bring about a serious protest movement.
I'm still hoping that that happens, and I will continue supporting the effort in every way I can. But I also hope that the organizers and leaders pay attention to the way the media is portraying the effort.
We all know that the corporate-owned media is going to try to undermine any protest movement--especially one from the Left. But I also think that there are some legitimate issues related to organization, clarity of purpose, and discipline, which should be looked at by the people organizing these protests. Especially since these issues are really not that hard to address. All that's needed is the will (and the vision) to do it.
I've been monitoring the protest, and I've written about it (here, and here, and here), and my hope is to eventually see a cohesive, organized, and disciplined movement. Otherwise, it will fizzle away without much effect.
Here's how The New York Times is portraying the protest: "Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim"
By late morning on Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street, a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people, had a default ambassador in a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka. A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms. Tikka had taken off all but her cotton underwear and was dancing on the north side of Zuccotti Park, facing Liberty Street, just west of Broadway. Tourists stopped to take pictures; cops smiled, and the insidiously favorable tax treatment of private equity and hedge-fund managers was looking as though it would endure.
What can be done to strengthen the movement?