"I worked for community agencies serving the poor and disfranchised for 40 years... When I stop working, I will be very poor... I will become part of the community I have spent my life serving."
The Occupy Wall Street Protesters are not doing it perfectly! Why?
Because there is no such thing as perfectly here.
NOTE: This diary is an modification of a post originally published yesterday at Democratic Underground. I have decided to update it as a diary here, due, in part, to the developments of last tonight.
@ggreenwald: How & why the narrative on #OWS changed so rapidly and completely raises a lot of interesting issues - still not 100% clear to me
Boston, Oct. 11, 2011
Photo by Aaron Spagnolo
With the arrests of 50-100 people in Boston at the Occupy Boston protests last night, including military veterans from the Veterans for Peace organization, (due, apparently, in part to concerns from officials, as AP reported, of the potential for damage to $150,000 worth of, um, shrubs recently planted by a conservancy group) with possible agent provocateur activities at the Air and Space Museum, and with the potential spread of the movement to Europe on Oct. 15, it can be assumed that will be an uptick in media reportage on the Occupy Wall Street protests. Confrontation seems to be the guarantee of mainstream media mention, and potentially a verification of certain beliefs that might be found among the protesters about the state and the media and who is served by whom. Free speech versus shrubbery. Bring me a shrubbery!
And there will be more discussion of tactics and purpose regarding OWS.
The Occupy Wall Street Protesters are mixing up their message and confusing everyone, the now-meme-ized critique goes. Who is the leader? What exactly do they want? Why can't they give a laundry list? Why can't they explain the endgame?
It is unfair and in fact disgusting that the American political economy is run for the benefit of a plutocracy. I don't see how that can be misunderstood.
- Todd Gitlin, Oct. 9, 2011
I believe it is generally acknowledged that this year's Egyptian protests and occupation of Tahrir Square served partly as inspiration and template for Occupy Wall Street. There, however, there were fairly defined and clear demands. As tactics were discussed among the Egyptian blogger revolutionaries, as tactics were criticized, analyzed, and meanings parsed, the protesters kept, well, protesting. They didn't leave. Or, they showed up again the next day. In the case of Egypt, it was communicated and understood the principles of nonviolent resistance would be the guide. The same is true of the Occupy Wall Street protests. When confronted with law enforcement action or any other threat to the protesters, dependent upon the situation, ideally, there is to be no violent reaction.
Ultimately the long-term success of this model in affecting whatever it is that you are trying affect, or in achieving whatever it is your intent to achieve is an important characteristic when considering protest strategy, in addition to moral, ethical and self-preservation considerations. Discussion and debate will, naturally, center around what it is that you, indeed, are trying to affect or achieve.
Reuters / Lucas Jackson
There is no guarantee in ANY of this, for any number of reasons. But, contrasted with the maximized profits-hungry, short-term-gain view that led to the situations upon which the righteous anger and frustrations of citizens are based, the tactics of nonviolent protest have to take the long view. There will be "failure." The history of nonviolent protest is that of Peterloo, and of murdered labor protestors in the 1920s, and of the virtually ignored massive anti-war gatherings in the Bush years.
When I was a child, and my father was off on a tour of duty in Vietnam, my mother, as a then-young Army wife, and mother of two, three, then four children, did not understand - this based on discussions I have had with her over the years. The protests in the streets at the time would have elicited responses from at the time, 1966, '67, of "Why were they there?" as she read the newspaper reports and watched the nightly news. Why were these (mostly) young people doing this? A few years later, if you would have been able to talk to her, or if you were to talk to her today, she would have admitted that she knew EXACTLY what they were doing and what they wanted. And you wouldn't find her critical of the messages or most of the tactics of the Vietnam War protest movement for the past 40 years, and you won't find her now.
(You can't talk to my dad about it. He died a few years ago from lung cancer after spending a couple of years in his youth inhaling a carcinogenic defoliant used by our government in another country. Yes, he smoked a long time, too. And he had a drinking problem, as well. These behaviors were pretty much under control in his later years. Read whatever cause-and-effect into all that as you will. I can't really say whether you would be rich or wrong, but, nevertheless, you can't discuss any of this with him. He remained a pretty staunch right-winger.)
How much of the critique of the Occupy Wall Street protests over the past weeks has been made up of false marginalization tactics? How much is legitimate confusion brought about simply by honest, but unnecessary ignorance or naiveté? And how much stems from real confusion brought about by the protest movement's activities?
It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation.
- New York Times Op/Ed, Oct. 8, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street protests have been met with conscious, intentional marginalization tactics, of course, of the quite spurious kind, some of these tactics familiar, dating back centuries, some of them arising only in the past few years. The Occupy Wall Street protests have been met with suppression tactics. The Occupy Wall Street protests have been met with stereotyping. With hypocritical co-opting tactics. With faux AND real perplexity about message. With cynicism. And, to put it frankly, just plain lazy-ass analysis, from reporters and pundits, alike.
Of course there is confusion and conflation - this is about things like credit-default swaps, and derivatives, and Casino Nation. You are going to find a lot of different sorts of messages lettered out onto the handmade cardboard signs.
Confused media folk might want to just start with Wikipedia to get the fundamentals, if you are truly interested in them:
The participants of the event are mainly protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government, among other concerns. Adbusters states that, 'Beginning from one simple demand - presidential commission to separate money from politics - we start setting the agenda for a new America'
ROBERT LONGO 'Corporate Wars,' 1982; cast aluminum
In our intro-level consideration of mass visual media and media literacy, explaining to my college classroom full of students what it is that these protests are "about," I stated that, although anecdotal in assessment, my sense was that it was fairly clear to me that there had been virtually none if not NO reporting at all of the Occupy Wall Street actions in New York City from the major cable news and newspaper media in this country in the first week of the events, which was when I brought it up to them in class.
I personally had been aware of this upcoming action two months before it occurred. As a former newspaper reporter, and as a current cultural analyst, I realized that, even with the chance of relative failure on the part of the original protesters and their initial protest actions, this was NEWS, and should have been reported on from Day One. It wasn't actually until the day after my lecture that I came across Nate Silver's scientific "news hits-based" confirmation of my individual assessment of the state of coverage. Even before I saw this graphic, my concluding question to the students regarding the media reaction was: "Why?" Why WAS this the media reaction?
Amidst all the cynicism toward the message and the hand-wringing over tactics, no one that I am aware of was arguing that it is not true that there have been failed protest tactics throughout history. There have been whole failed protest movements. Claudette Colvin gave way to Rosa Parks. Not every one agreed on the tactics of the Civil Rights movement of the mid- and late-20th century. NOR on the tactics of the Vietnam War protest movement. No one now agrees necessarily even on the causal relationships between protest and change in policy or social attitude.
But, as the Bush years taught us, as with everything, when it comes to social progress, all is PROCESS. Tactics that worked in the past won't necessarily work the same way in the future, even next week. ("The Counter to Non-Violent Protest Is Lack Of Publicity & Demonization.") Non-violent change scholars explore "best practices," which would really better practices;" the effective tactics used in Egypt, the protesters there schooled in them by American peaceful resistance experts. There is no perfection.
BARBARA KRUGER 'Money Is Like Shit...,' 2011; painted wall & video installation
Despite the deliberately, or not so deliberately, dismissive and derogatory anti-protest messages, and despite the general cynicism, and, yes, existing alongside the valid, honest critical concerns about how this will play out and what all this IS - let's say it all disappears tomorrow, which is what the Powers-That-Be in Boston seemed to be "banking" on, say, it disappears through effective malevolent force or just through natural attenuation...
Despite all these things, I offer that:
These Are Very Significant Things The Occupy Wall Street Protests Have Already Accomplished
- Brought Together & Out Into The Streets Americans From All Walks Of Life (Negating The Attempts To Stereotype Them).
Photo by David Shankbone
- Brought The Pundit & Politicians Out Of The Woodwork To Document Exactly Which Side They Are On, Revealing Motivations & Agenda.
Paul Weiskel
- Proven The Viability Of Large-Scale Social Media-Based Dissent Organization Here In The United States.
Paul Weiskel
- Drawn Out Absurd & Telling Defensive Reactions From The 1% & Their Obsequious Operatives
- Pulled Many Citizens Out Of Their Continued Complacency, Engaging Them & Others Concerning These Pertinent Issues.
- Expanded, Starting From Seemingly Nothing, With Essentially No Major Media Coverage, To Dozens Of Communities Around The Country.
Reuters / Stephen Lam (San Francisco)
- Created Occupations & Demonstrations That Are STILL On-Going & Growing.
Frank Franklin II / AP Photo
- Drawn Inappropriate, Overreactive & Inequal Responses From Law Enforcement (& Made Viral Documentation Of Same).
Mario Tama / Getty Images
- Connected The Issues Of The Bush Tax Cuts, Current Tax Rates, Our Expensive Ongoing Wars, Attacks On Unions, & The Devastating, Unfair Medical Insurance System In The U.S. To The corrupted Political Economic Status Quo.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
- Demonstrated The Continued (Despite The Shaming Example Of the Bush War Years) Inbred Corruption & Corrosion Of Our Corporate Mainstream Media (Essentially Forcing Them To Cover A Story, However Badly & "Spin-Fully," That They Did Not Want To Cover), Thus Showing These Organizations, Indeed, Do See These Issues & Problems As "Abstracts."
Paul Weiskel
- Made It Clear To Anyone WILLING To Try To Understand That All This Is About Corruption, A Broken System & That Protesters Want ACCOUNTABILITY, & True, Meaningful, Fair & Lasting Regulation Of Lobbying & Financial Industries.
Reuters / Stephen Lam
- Communicated To The Rest Of The World That Not Every American Is Fine With What Wall Street Has Been Allowed To Do To The World.
The Rude Pundit
- Facilitated In Many Areas Of U.S. Discourse Unavoidable Discussion Of Vast Unprecedented Inequitable Transfer Of Wealth That Has Been Occurring, With Orchestrated Policy, In Addition To Day-To-Day Corruption, Over The Past Several Generations.
- Made Iconic A Memorable Slogan: I Am The 99%.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY:
- Created An Historical & Now Well-Documented & REAL Symbol Of Reality-Based Dissent For Our Time.
Andrew Holbrooke / Corbis
They just haven't done it quite right, though, and most certainly not perfectly, and nobody knows how it is all going to end up, and plenty still don't get it, (and obviously they NEVER will, yes?), and it will eventually just peter out, so, ergo ipso facto ineptum,
they probably shouldn't be doing it at all.
Right?
Ask my mother about the Vietnam War.
Let me tell what they're talking about. They're complaining about the fact the Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago and nobody's been held responsible for that. Not a single person has been indicted or convicted for destroying twenty percent of our national net worth accumulated over two centuries. They're upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over economic policies of this country and that one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them, as well. That's the truth of the matter...
- Alan Grayson, Oct. 7, 2011
Why do these protesters and their vocal supporters (and their non-vocal supporters) want something anyway?
We have not fixed our financial crisis, according to Michael Lewis, the author of "Liar's Poker" and "The Big Short", who makes the case that Wall Street in recent years seems to have become, in his concise terminology, "an engine of unfairness." What happened here is that Wall Street - which is populated, he points out, by people who are "paid more than anyone in the society because they supposedly know what they are doing with money," - Wall Street "orchestrates the biggest misallocation of capital, of money in the history of the world, and pay themselves an awful lot of money whilte they're doing," then gets "essentially bailed out of their own mistakes with taxpayer money. For people on the outside, this looks an awful lot "like socialism for capitalists."
The richest 20% of households own 85% of the wealth.
-Time Magazine Cover, Oct. 10, 2011
For my students, the old shirt/bumper sticker joke that their parents are spending their children's inheritance on their crazy decadent vacation, now has to be replaced with their parents have had their children's inheritance stolen by someone who then spent it on a crazy decadent vacation and it was fine with the SEC. I showed them this graphic:
What is the correct response to these facts and their future implications and current manifestations? How do the common people make people aware of this, or more aware of this and make any demands about it? Is the purpose to make people aware of it? Or is the purpose to demand this and more? If we can't decide EXACTLY what should be demanded, should we all just stay home and shut up until some PERFECT situation arises? At some point, as is often true in life, it comes down to what I call the Todd Rundgren Rule: "What do we do now?" "Something/Anything."
Speaking up about our continuing egregiously flawed and biased, and essentially POLITICAL situation, in any semi-organized way at all is something important, and it has been accomplished, IN ADDITION to those things listed above. It has begun an attempt to set an agenda for the new America.
'Why are they protesting?' ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: 'What took you so long?' ... Let's treat this beautiful movement as if it is the most important thing in the world. Because it is.
- Naomi Klein, Oct. 6, 2011
If all of the above is not enough for you, media folks, to clear up any cloudy purpose to these actions. And P.J. O'Rourke, and Erin Burnett, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck, here...
Go here.
Read them all.
Then once again come out in public and call the protesters hippies with bad toilet habits, or hypocrites, or failures, who have no purpose in this doing of something, anything.
"- I am $92,000 and rising in defaulted student loans.
- Lost financial aid during my LAST semester of my BFA.
- Now, I cannot complete my education - EVER. No Masters for me, no PhD for me. EVER.
- I'm disabled from PTDS/Depression/Major Anxiety/Agoraphobia and more - Cannot work.
- I'm being evicted mid-November w/ my 2 companion animals out onto the streets.
- I have NO family and NO ONE to take me in; my social worker never even called me back!
- My blood pressure was 158 over 106 - high.
- I don't earn enough from Soc. Sec. Disability (750/mo. and $48 in food stamp/mo.) to even rent a room anywhere.
- I wish I were dead.
I am the 99 percent."