Well, Occupy Wall Street released their First Official Statement yesterday. If you've not already seen it, you can find a copy of the official text here.
Before I go any further, let me just say that I am a big supporter of the protest. If the protesters are doing nothing else, they are at least yelling at the correct villains – the big banks and the financial industry that, as a whole, are most responsible for ushering in the Age of Agony.
And the OWS protesters are to be applauded for realizing that in order to draw attention to a cause, to a protest, it is insufficient these days to simply organize a large march/rally and then go home. That is a one-day event, and is quickly forgotten in the 24/7 news cycle in which we now live. Occupy Wall Street is forcing the rest of the nation – gradually and unwillingly -- to pay attention to them because they do not intend to make a little noise and then go away, congratulating themselves on “having been heard.” They plan to stay and be a thorn in the side of those who want the country’s financial elite to continue “business as usual.”
All that being said, after reviewing OWS’s First Official Statement it pains me to have to admit that it left me feeling, ah . . . underwhelmed. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Below the squiggly is a brief explication of the things I found problematic about the Statement, and the concern it raises with me that while OWS's "horizontal organization" might be invaluable for getting people physically involved in the protest, it may also detract from OWS's ability to craft effectively persuasive messages. I also have included an example of the type of announcement I was hoping to see, and the reasons I think that type of announcement might be more effective at explaining to those who do not yet realize it that their interests and ours are, in fact, the same.
And I want to say beforehand that I have only the utmost respect for the people that have pulled Occupy Wall Street together, that have made the effort to make their voices heard, and that have risked arrests and random attacks by the police to exercise the rights afforded them under our Constitution. Nothing herein is intended to be nor should be construed as an attempt to disparage in any way those who have made the Occupy demonstrations possible.
I understand that Occupy Wall Street has always intended for its protest to be a “completely horizontal” organization – that is, no hierarchy, no top-down organization, just an example of direct democracy in action. But I think its First Official Statement illustrates some of the drawbacks inherent in such an organization. Specifically, it seems to me that – in an effort to encompass all points of view and, especially, to include all of its participants’ common grievances – OWS is diluting what could be a powerful message.
The Committee Prose
This dilution is apparent in the very first sentence: “As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together.” I read that and my first thoughts were: Isn’t what brought you together a feeling of mass injustice? Didn’t you just say that in the first clause of the same sentence?
This has the feel of committee prose, language cobbled together by compromise. The same idea could be expressed more powerfully and more directly by simplifying it and by losing the word “feeling.” This is supposed to be a persuasive document, and you don’t persuade people by telling them what you feel or what you think . . . you persuade people by speaking in short, declarative sentences that tell them what is: “We gather together in solidarity to protest a mass injustice.” No ifs, ands, or buts, you just flat out declare that a mass injustice has been perpetrated and that you are pissed off about it.
And I’m not sure what purpose the Statement's second sentence serves. Nobody paying attention to OWS is hoping that the protesters are their “allies.” Whether OWS is on their side or not isn’t what anybody who’s paying attention wants to hear. What they want to hear is why OWS has been camped out on Wall Street for more than 2 weeks.
Which brings me to the second paragraph. And it’s not that I disagree with any of the statements contained therein, it’s just that . . . well, strip away the committee prose and it sounds like a generic liberal complaint: The system depends on the people and can be corrupted and it’s up to the people to fight corruption and the corporations are corrupting it so the people have to fight the corporations. Again, nothing here tells disinterested parties who the protesters are, what the protesters are specifically upset over, or why the audience should care. I think OWS would have been better off just lifting almost in its entirety the statement put out earlier by We Are the 99% explaining who “the 99%” are.
The List of Grievances
But it’s the list of grievances that I think presents the biggest problem. OWS ties 23 separate grievances together by alleging they all have been committed by “corporations,” and it does indeed appear from their Statement that what OWS is really protesting are “corporate forces of the world” that have wronged people.
But I have to confess that I don’t really follow this. If OWS is upset about “corporate forces,” why aren’t they protesting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s headquarters in Washington? What the hell is OWS doing on Wall Street? I gave the protesters credit earlier for “at least yelling at the correct villains – the big banks and the financial industry,” but it appears from their Statement that they are yelling at the financial industry for things other people are doing.
For example, according to their Statement OWS gathered in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district to complain about: animal testing, poor food safety, onerous student loans, unscrupulous health insurance practices, oil dependency, the selling of consumer information, a failure to recall faulty products, misusing corporate media, the death penalty, colonialism, torture of prisoners, the creation of weapons of mass destruction, and a host of other things. But with a list of grievances like this I tend to believe the audience that OWS needs to reach - the American public - is just going to think to itself: So they’re picketing investment banks because they’re upset about animal testing, colonialism, and the death penalty. Huh. And then ignore them and turn back to the 24-hour “Hee-Haw” Channel.
I think it would have been much more effective to pick out only those few listed grievances most applicable to Wall Street, present those grievances as reasons the economy no longer works for 99% of us, and then sum up those grievances with an over-the-top (it is a protest, after all) conclusory statement that clearly distinguishes the good guys from the bad guys.
Ideally it would be short, simple, and just repetitive enough for a casual listener to get the point. It would explain what OWS is doing on Wall Street, give the audience a specific villain to hate, and explain in simple, easy-to-understand language why that villain deserves to be hated.
In short, I had hoped for a First Official Statement that sounded something more like the following:
DECLARATION OF THE OCCUPATION OF NEW YORK
This Document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on Sept. 29, 2011
_______________________________________________________________________________________
We gather together in solidarity to protest a mass injustice.
We are the 99 percent for whom the American economy does not work. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the richest 1 percent in our country gets everything. We are the 99 percent and we have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known:
The bankers on Wall Street have forged documents and falsified affidavits, to
take our homes from us;
The bankers on Wall Street have taken trillions of dollars from us, without
conditions, strings or consequences, and have used that money to pay
themselves billions of dollars in bonuses;
The bankers on Wall Street have insisted on economic policies that benefit them
and only them, that drain America’s wealth, weaken our nation, and impoverish
the rest of us;
The bankers on Wall Street are killing America.
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge all of you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, and address the problems we all now face.
To all communities that take direct democratic action, we offer you support, assistance, and all the resources at our disposal.
Join Us! Make Your Voices Heard!
* * *
Now, please note, I didn't write any of that. It's just an amalgam of what OWS published and what "We are the 99%" already put out. But presented this way, I think the statement above does a better job of clearly and concisely explaining what specific problem brought the protesters to Wall Street, of explaining to the vast majority of the American public why they also should be pissed off, of urging more people to get involved, and – most importantly – of identifying a single villain.
The easiest way to sway people, to motivate people, is to direct them toward someone specific whom they can blame for their woes. Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Back-Up Singers have been making millions of dollars a year, for years, because they learned that lesson a long time ago. That is why they always have a stock character villain whom they call “the Liberal,” no matter what specific thing their audience is unhappy about.
And while it is true that there are a lot of issues all rational people should be pissed off about right now, I think it is hard to mobilize the apathetic by pointing to every single problem you can think of and then telling people it’s the fault of “corporations.” That term is too inclusive, too vague, too generic and – Hey! – a lot of people who are upset right now do still have jobs, are grateful to have their jobs, and many of them work for corporations. Telling these people to get mad at their bosses is not going to sway these people to support our cause.
But almost nobody whom OWS is trying to reach works for or gives a damn about the fat cat banksters. Wanna rally the American people to protest what’s happening in America? Fat cat banksters are the perfect target, and they have the added advantage of being the people at whom we should be angriest right now.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly . . . by keeping the message focused tightly on a single villain it gives the American media the easy-to-explain storyline “hook” that they need to cover the protest. If the media are going to pay any attention to Occupy Wall Street (and, until recently, that was a big “if”) the story can’t just be A buncha people are pissed off about a buncha stuff. A story needs conflict to be viable, and the media have proved that they are only capable of thinking about conflict in binary terms: right/left, liberal/conservative, republican/democrat, good/bad, etc., etc. (but, curiously, not correct/incorrect; that distinction no longer seems to exist for America's political media).
So Occupy Wall Street needs a single villain to square off against, one that almost nobody can be sympathetic toward, and one that can easily be put on the defensive with just a couple of questions from a few blown-dry bobble-heads: Aren't the protesters right? Didn’t Wall Street screw up the economy? Didn’t Wall Street take trillions of taxpayer dollars and pay out billions in bonuses? Don’t a lot of Wall Street banksters pay lower tax rates than middleclass Americans? And on and on and on.
The Wall Street banksters make a perfect – and perfectly justified – target. Put ‘em on the defensive, make ‘em squirm for the cameras, use the attention that comes from the occupation to get the country talking about this story again, to get the country angry at the right people again. And, not incidentally, to get the country on our side in the future regarding all the other things that need to be addressed.
At least, that's how I see it. But again and as always . . . I could be wrong, and your mileage may vary.
Cross-posted at Casa Cognito.