The #occupywallstreet movement—as well as occupations in Chicago, Boston, LA, and soon a big one here in DC—is gaining steam.
More importantly, it's gaining attention from the media, who are getting more and more interested in what the protesters are all about.
With another wave of #occupy[insertplacehere] protests set to start off in the coming couple of days—as well as the growing movement on Wall Street—it's time to start thinking of how to turn the corner from a group of protesters to something that people across the nation, from all walks of life, can rally to.
Here's my bold suggestion: Let the media pictures of this weekend's #occupy protests show a sea of waving American flags.
Follow me below the squiggly for some thoughts on this...
I understand that this may rub some people the wrong way—people who see this as an international movement, people (rightly) concerned about the crimes being committed in the name of Americans around the world and that uniquely American chauvinism here at home that often fuels those crimes. I understand that there are some people who would be genuinely uncomfortable waving or marching under the Stars and Stripes.
But I think we need to start wrapping the #occupy protests in patriotism for a few reasons:
We're Americans. First and foremost, we're Americans, dammit. When we talk about the 99%, I think most of us don't read that as referring to 99% of the human race—but to 99% of Main Street America, the 99% of us who have seen our jobs shipped overseas, who have seen our parents' retirement accounts wiped out, who have seen our kids' teachers getting laid off, and who have seen the Wall Street robber barons laugh all the way to the bank (which is conveniently also located on Wall Street, so it's a short laugh-walk). The protests we're modeling ourselves after—the ones in Egypt and Libya and Tunisia—were replete with the flags of those countries (even if they were sometimes using older, pre-dictator flags). Why deny ourselves the symbol of ours as we try to take our country back from the Wall Street robber barons?
We really do love America. There are a lot of us here on the Left—myself included, despite the relationship being somewhat complicated—who find the flag and the country and the people of America inspiring, warts and all. This is a great country, a beautiful country, a country that really did save the people of the planet from Nazis and who really have made the world a better place for a lot of people, even as we've screwed up our share of things too. And it's folks who fought for this country, under that flag—some in that fight against the Nazis, some in Korea or Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan—who are often getting screwed the most by the rapaciousness of Wall Street's criminal class.
This is a patriotic act. What act is more patriotic than using the rights so many Americans have fought and died to protect—the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to petition? One of the central tenets of patriotism has been that one puts the good of one's country ahead of one's own personal gain; the Wall Street criminals have screwed over their fellow Americans and put our national economy and security at risk, all for the sake of making themselves more money. They are acting in an unpatriotic fashion; what could be more patriotic than standing up to them?
The American flag is a flag of rebellion. When did the Stars and Stripes first fly? During the American Revolution, as a symbol and statement that the American states were no longer British colonies, but rather a united country fighting for its right to self-determination. It was a flag that brought together rebels of all stripes—from Massachusetts Puritans to Virginia planters to Pennsylvania merchants—in a single cause, rather than under their own state flags. The American flag stands for the right of the people to decide our own fate—and to cast off oppression, including the oppression of the moneyed interests on Wall Street and their bought-and-paid-for politicians in the Capitol.
The right-wingers think they own it. Want to piss off a Tea Partier? Wave an American flag. Better yet, wave an American flag in one hand and a Gadsden flag in the other. The right-wingers think they own patriotism. They think the 1% should have the right to decide the meaning of the flag that belongs to 100% of us. We need to take that symbol back, telling them that the flag is ours, that it stands for the idea that "a government [and an economy, and a culture] of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth." We are America, and we will wave our flag as we retake our country from the robber barons who have stolen it from us.
It'll help us win over ordinary Americans. If you want a symbol that will be (a) instantly recognizable on camera, (b) clear in meaning to just about everyone in the country, and (c) a clear sign that these are regular Americans, not the usual "professional protesters," you couldn't do any better than the American flag. It's damn near impossible for the media to paint us as DFH's if the Stars and Stripes are the most prevalent symbol. A scholar named Kenneth Burke once wrote that the central idea of rhetoric isn't persuasion but identification—that the effective rhetor will get his or her audience to identify with him or her, not just make a good argument. Ordinary Americans, including many standing on Wall Street right now, identify with our nation's flag; how better to show them that we stand for their rights, we stand for their jobs, we stand for their futures, than to show them that we stand with them underneath the flag?
The optics will be wonderful. Like I wrote above, the flag is instantly recognizable on camera; the bright colors and obvious pattern stick out like a sore thumb, even if out of focus in the background of a photo or video. And image memory and image association sticks with people much longer than the spoken or written word. If it's impossible to point a camera at an #occupy protest without getting at least one American flag in the frame, that's what Joe or Jane Sixpack, flipping through the channels to get to the college football game on ESPN, will remember—a bunch of people standing on Wall Street or Main Street, protesting the robber barons and waving American flags. It'll be a subconscious association of our cause with patriotism, with the country's bright future, with the good things in the country's past.
In short, it's time for those of us who are uncomfortable with patriotic symbols to swallow that discomfort for a time, for the sake of the success of the movement—and it's time for our movement's love of our country and its people to shine through in each and every picture taken of an #occupy movement this weekend.
If you've got a big flag and a long pole to mount it on, bring them and wave them proudly; if you can afford to buy a few dozen small ones, do that and bring them, and hand them out to folks when they ask you for them.
Let's wave our country's flag proudly, knowing that the nation's founders—who envisioned a nation "of the people, by the people, and for the people"—stand beside us.
Let's make the #occupy protests a sea of red, white, and blue.
(The preceding blog entry is an extended riff on this comment in Horace Boothroyd III's piece about the union kepi.)