Movement defined: an organized effort to promote or attain an end.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was initially organized by AdBusters to promote vast economic inequality and obscene corporate and government corruption as causation. Thus, in the broadest sense, OWS can be defined as a movement. Yet, I remain skeptical that OWS is a movement that will build unified momentum essential to creating significant socio-economic change. This is not to say that the Rebel is not valuable and essential—quite the contrary. The Rebel is the catalyst from which a movement can spring. More on this another time. Back to OWS movement (loosely defined).
Is the movement about setting up a tent in a park; thus, occupying physical space? Or is it about setting up democratic ideas in the minds of the 99 percent who need to be reminded or newly educated about such things?
If it is the former, then by all means react to the police and private security (being paid with public tax dollars) and make the fight about the right to occupy a park. In other words, play the power elite’s game.
If it is the latter, set up round-the-clock shifts of occupation and ensure that each shift is focused on education about corporate greed and government collusion, and put forward solutions. After all, by all legal accounts nobody is kicking anybody out of any public park. However, precedent abounds for government implementing curfews and limiting usage (e.g., no camping, no sleeping).
The ‘movement’ must not play into the hands of the power elite – both private and government. The elite understand that truth will set us free. They understand and fear the uniting of even a broad minority of the 99 percent. That’s why they have sought from the beginning to control the message and the message is about fear and ownership—fear of physical safety (fear of the violent, dirty, dangerous mob), claim of property rights (the mob is destroying your property, is hurting local business), and so forth.
OWS must stay positive, stay focused, stay on message. Focused…? Message…?
The movement needs to put forward a focused vision of what/why the 99 percent should unite. This remains the rub. It is possible to do this?
The ill-defined what/why and how to achieve the what is why the Occupiers are losing ground, literally and figuratively. The story has become the old one: protester versus police. Is that the story OWS set-out to tell?
The broad what/why put forward at the start was to bring to light and oppose wealth inequality and undue corporate influence. Good. A majority of the 99 percent can surely support that.
OWS et al has mostly embraced the Declaration put forward by Occupy New York City, though several Occupy cities have put forward its own declaration. I think addressing local concerns/needs/demands under the broad banner of opposing economic inequality is smart. However, the movement(?) is becoming an umbrella for an array of causes—from opposition to all wars and support of reformist socialism. Whether or not some may agree with all or part of the growing laundry list, the point is that 99 percent do not.
The point is, when you are seeking to unite 99 percent of the people, you had better find something specific that everybody agrees with or forget about it. Try a laundry list approach and the 99 percent quickly becomes the 50 percent or the 25 percent or the 5 percent or the 1 percent.
Ninety-nine percent of Americans that possess less wealth than the top one percent include those who are politically far left to far right, or claim no political affiliation. The 99 percent include many who support the military and war. The majority of the 99 percent are not seeking to camp out. They have been supporting those camping out because the initial core message resonated with them. They know the system is broken. They know through their own lives and hanging on by their fingernails that things are messed up.
The majority is teeming with emotion: frustration, anger,confusion, resignation. The 99 percent are both stuck and ready to ignite. This is why: when truth is spoken through word and deed it causes an involuntary reaction in the body human (individual and collective) and the message, like a surge of oxygenated blood, awakens and expands the artery of hope that runs deep and through the heart of each and all of us.
Everybody, including the 1 percent, knows that OWS began by speaking the truth. The system is out of balance. It is unfair. It is unsustainable. It is wrong. We know that corporations wield too much power and that governments have become no more than middle managers used to appease and deflect and dampen the 99 percent—not only to maintain the status quo by to ensure its ever-expanding dominance.
In the US, we still believe that 99 percent has power over 1 percent. But power to do what? To occupy a park? Or to demand change? Not simply demand change, but put forward solutions that a majority of the 99 percent will get behind.
Occupying a park is easy compared to organizing for tangible change. It isn’t just up to OWS to figure out the priorities, it is up to all of us.
