Tea party co-founder Karl Denninger has been openly speaking about Occupy Wall Street for the past week and his message is refreshing and clear: “learn from the mistakes that the Tea Party succumbed to.”
What was once a legitimate movement was quickly hijakced by big money, Denninger says. Vice President Joe Biden has said that Occupy Wall Street can become the left’s response to the Tea Party and if we aren’t careful, this prediction could come true. According to the Rocky Mountain Collegian, Denninger has given the following response in regards to the current Tea Party.
“Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party’s own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the **ing money!”
The consensus is that the more people from different walks of life that join together, the more powerful and effective the Occupy movement can be. But there has been plenty written about how #OWS and the Tea Party differ. The Tea Party movement was quickly co-opted by the farthest right leaning elements of the political spectrum and while Occupy Wall Street is leftist in nature it trends more toward the center than the extreme. By being inclusive rather than exclusive, by truly representing the 99 percent, the Occupy Movement is setting itself up for longevity.
“The problem with protests and the political process is that it is very easy, no matter how big the protest is, for the politicians to simply wait for the people to go home,” says Denninger. Then they can ignore you. People are saying, ‘You know what? I know I’ve gotten screwed by all of this but I don’t know how I got screwed. I just know that it happened. And it all came from New York and Washington DC.”
A topic of discussion among many Occupy observers is whether or not the movement needs a written list of demands or if it should remain a visual statement representing the frustrations of the 99 percent. Denninger seems to prefer the latter and told RT.com why a list of demands would undermine the message:
One of the things that the Occupy movement seems to have going for it is it has not turned around and issued a set of formal demands,” said Denninger. “This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Everyone is looking for a set of demands.” Denninger added that once the protesters formally approach the banks and government with a list of demands, “then somebody is going to say, ‘Well, we gave you 70 percent. Now go home.’”
Denninger made reference to the undermining of the original Tea Party saying, “One of the things we wanted was the end to bailouts and an end to government deficit spending, and as you can see that didn’t happen.” According to Denninger, Occupy Wall Street’s best decision would be to stay the course:
“Stay on message, which is that the corruption is not a singular event,” he said. “You can’t focus in one place. You have to get the money out of politics, which is very difficult to do, but at the same time you can’t silence people’s voice.”