Originally published on Tikkun Daily |
Recently, I described how Occupy Wall Street is approaching – or has reached – its Tipping Point.
But there's a much more subversive, and equally interesting, way to view the manner in which Occupy Wall Street is quickly being embedded into the American consciousness. And that is by thinking about the movement's progression in consumerist terms.
The chart below graphs the way in which a consumer product becomes firmly entrenched in the marketplace:
First you have the inventors, those who create a product and launch it into the marketplace.
In the case of Occupy Wall Street, the inventor – the creator of the idea to occupy Wall Street as a Tahrir-style tactic – would be Adbusters magazine and the 700 brave souls who marched to Zuccotti Park on September 17. (An argument could be made to include those who began to increase that initial encampment in its first week, as well as those who have begun occupations in different cities around the country.)
Next, you have the early adopters, those souls who choose – at a very early stage – to try out a consumer product before it catches mainstream appeal and sales. (These are your iPad cheerleaders, for example.)
In the case of Occupy Wall Street, this is many of us (myself included) – those who immediately latched onto the idea of occupation as a way to protest the corrupt control the wealthiest one percent have over our political system.
And here is where things get exciting: the early majority. See that graph above? See that peak? According to polls released in the past several days, Occupy Wall Street appears to have reached the early majority stage, if we are to subvert this consumerist concept and apply it to the world of principles.
I will get to the CBS/NY Times poll that many people have heard of in a moment. But first, I want to relay a poll published today on attitudes among citizens of New York and New Jersey on Occupy Wall Street. The findings are stunningly beautiful:
New Jerseyans taking part in the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City or a related demonstration in Philadelphia have the support of the state’s voters by a margin of 46 to 29 percent, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll published Thursday.
Meanwhile, 4 of 5 voters (81 percent) are following the protests, with 3 of 5 (62 percent) saying they’ve heard “a great deal” about them.
“Sympathy for the Wall Street protesters is a direct reflection of voters’ general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country,” Prof. Peter Woolley, the poll‘s director, said. “Something broke and voters know that whatever it was, it hasn’t been fixed.”
Sympathy for the movement cuts across gender, age and education. Men and women, both young and old voters, high school-educated and those with graduate degrees support the protests in equal proportions.
And in the CBS/NY Times poll published on Tuesday, we have this:
Already, after just over 40 days of protesting – many of which had relatively little or no mainstream media coverage – a large percentage of Americans are expressing both agreement with many of the core ideas behind Occupy Wall Street and general support for the protests.
They are adopting many of the core principles around which many of us are marching, occupying and protesting.
Are many of these early majority Americans out in the streets?
No.
At least, not yet.
Last night, I wrote about how this movement has become, for me, my generation's Vietnam War.
Here's an inspiring thought: if even a minute fraction of the early majority of Americans who are currently sympathizing with the core ideals of Occupy Wall Street make it into the streets, #ows will not rival the anti-war protests that took place in the 60s and 70s.
They will surpass them.
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Follow me on Twitter @David_EHG
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