Here is some information about the origins of the OWS movement. It was not spontaneously started by a bunch of unemployed working-class or middle-class Americans. It was launched by a professional activist group who in 1989 started a company "Ad Busters" based in Vancouver, Canada, and which has networks in various countries. The company has it's own website on which they (1)advertise their bimonthly magazine, (2)solicit monetary donations, and (3)list projects they have founded (including OWS), among other things. The company claims to be anticonsumerist and anticapitalist, incisive.
According to Wikipedia:
Adbusters was founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz, a duo of award-winning documentary filmmakers living in Vancouver, British Columbia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Just for the record, this is in no way a criticism of Canada as a country or of its citizens. I am fully aware that Canada is a big ally of the US, and very supportive of our President and of US citizens. This is just a fact that the company is happens to be based in Vancouver.
Ad Busters describes itself as a
"global network of artists, writers, activists, pranksters, students, educators, etc..who want to advance the new socialist activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift the way we will live in the 21st century."
http://www.adbusters.org/...
Their Mission Statement:
Our mission is to cut through the fog of mental pollution, changing the way information flows in our society. With incisive philosophical thrusts, activist commentaries and visual mindbombs from around the world, we want to enlighten you, enrage you and enlist you in creating a new future. We hope Adbusters is a kick in the head, a life changing epiphany and a compelling call to arms.
Right next to this statement, you can't help but notice that there are three magazine covers, one of which shows a young man holding a gun as if to hide it in his jacket, another showing a photo of President Obama with a photoshopped clown's nose.
http://www.adbusters.org/...
In the same magazine edition with President Obama on the cover, there is an editorial
entitled "Regime Change in America." Next to the title is a picture of a Tea Party rally with the nasty signs and all. And here is an excerpt from the editorial:
Only the rise of a mythical “third party” can save America now. The Tea Party movement is a promising start, but it must find a counterpoint – the birth of a radical Coffee Party movement on the left.
Ad Busters first put out their initial OWS "Demand" when they published their first statement on the OWS strategy on July 13, 2011. In this statement, they revealed that:
Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?
The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it.
This demand seems to capture the current national mood because cleaning up corruption in Washington is something all Americans, right and left, yearn for and can stand behind. If we hang in there, 20,000-strong, week after week against every police and National Guard effort to expel us from Wall Street, it would be impossible for Obama to ignore us. Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations.
http://www.adbusters.org/...
So it is clear that this OWS creator does not see itself as antithetical to the Tea-Party, but rather an extension of the Tea Party. Furthermore, there are strong Libertarian elements associated with this movement. If that is the case then I'm not inclined to be supportive of the movement.
If you really want President Obama to challenge Wall Street, why are you trying to thwart his re-election by pushing a "third party" in an election year, and implicitly telling folks don't vote? Why not wait until he's re-elected and then make your demands from there? On the Chris Hayes show today, on the issue of OWS, Canadian author Naomi Klein was allowed to spew some anti-Obama talking points while de-emphasizing the importance of voting in 2012. Lucky her! If a Repub gets elected, she can safely retreat to Canada as a citizen and continue living her upper class CONSUMERIST life there. Unfortunately, the majority of us US citizens who do not have Canadian citizenship and are not upper-class, can only rely on our vote.
If it's just to create some kind of random dislike of government (which ultimately benefits Republicans), with no focused goals for accomplishing beneficial change, then count me out. I've seen signs that the media is already framing it as an anti-Obama movement. I have to ask: where were all these movements before 2009?