I have an apology to make to those who had discussed with me the possibility of doing marches/protests without the assistance of progressive organizations. I was wrong. I was stuck in the old ways of how marches and protests had to be done. I thought that a Protest started linearly from points A to Z on a linear path. You had to organize way in advance. You had to gather buses together, send out massive e-mails to your lists, fundraise, and then get permits, speakers, etc., ready in place for the protest/march. I thought people weren’t going to attend the #OccupyWallStreet protests because you traditionally needed organizational support to pull something like that off. It’s what I thought I knew in order for a protest/march to succeed.
I was wrong. The #OccupyWallStreet movement needed none of these linear points on that graph for it to succeed. They didn’t need the assistance of progressive organizations. They didn’t need e-mail blasts, list-servs, and all the traditional get-out-the-word methods. Instead, they used social media. They used the Mike Check. They told their friends. Words, pictures, and videos were spread all over the Internet. The protest was being retweeted, liveblogged, and it reached that critical zeitgeist for it to become mainstream in its virality across the country. And now I see the progressive organizations clambering to get onto the train that they didn’t start, and had rationalized many reasons for not trying to start a train like that in the first place to begin with.
The difference in #OWS’s success from traditional progressive protests/marches is the length of it. It truly is an occupation of Wall Street. There is no end in sight. Thus, there is no end to the conversations being sparked by #OccupyWallStreet. Traditional protests and marches were only a day or so in length, after massive resources had been spent for those, only to garner little media attention. No wonder why Moveon.org and the DCCC is now on the train, to build up their e-mail lists off the #OccupyWallStreet movement. This isn’t a partisan movement. This is a movement that involves most Americans----the 99%, the left, the right, the libertarians, the anarchists, the socialists, and those who have seen the income inequality get even greater in our lifetimes along with the corrupt influence of money in our politics. It would be a great mistake to try to make #OccupyWallStreet into an overly partisan/electoral focus.
Instead of our leaders telling us where we need to go and clap about something, they need to listen to us and go where we need them to go. That’s what #OccupyWallStreet seems to be about to me. It’s a giant WAKE THE F**K UP call aimed at the 1% and the politicians that support them.
Americans know there’s a great imbalance in our democracy. It’s why #OccupyWallStreet didn’t need the organizational support from progressive organizations. All #OccupyWallStreet needed was to listen to those angry about the current economic injustices, provide a space, and then liveblog and retweet the messages coming from the 99%.
And it worked. There they are now, hundreds in Liberty Square, with hundreds more gathering in similar public squares across the entire country. They are gathering, they are now getting attention on the news where their needs had been ignored in polls and surveys, and America is speaking. To ignore what the 99% are saying would be a grave mistake. Instead of trying to co-opt #OccupyWallStreet or use list-building off it, why not just listen, and then amplify that message towards politicians?