I was at the local #occupyeverything event yesterday, along with a hundred or so others. This was basically just an organizing effort concluding with a General Assembly. There was a lot of talk about "protests" and one of the participants would keep saying:
"It's not a protest movement. It's a demonstration."
Indeed.
I've been watching what I could of the #occupywallstreet efforts on the Livestream and the YouTubes, and over and over again, it's been clear to me that while nearly everyone involved is actively protesting the corruption of our government by the money of Wall Street -- among many other things -- the "protest" is not the action.
The "demonstration" is.
What the participants are attempting is nothing less than revolutionary: they are demonstrating how to create an alternative civilization, one that is participatory, democratic, and communitarian. They are performing this demonstration in the midst of the financial center of the Western world, and literally a block away from the site of the World Trade Center. There is immense power in simply and directly demonstrating another way in this location at this time.
They perform this demonstration hour by hour, day in and day out. They are demonstrating on behalf of something else again. Of course it is not the first time people have tried to do this sort of thing. Communitarianism and participatory democracy and the utopianism that goes with it has deep roots in the American experience; in some ways, it's almost the definition of the American experience.
And that may be one reason why these demonstrations are proliferating at such a rapid pace, why some many additional thousands have joined up with the #occupywallstreet demonstration in New York, and why -- perhaps -- this effort has a greater chance of success than pretty much any protest.
It's an amazing and wonderful thing.