Last Saturday, I was arrested with approximately 700 other people as were were surrounded by New York City Police roughly mid-way across the car path of the Brooklyn Bridge. We were taking part in a march organized by Occupy Wall Street, which has been encamped in Zucotti Park for about three weeks now. I've been cautiously intrigued by the action since I'd seen it mentioned on some lefty website or another in early September. I had participated in the last six months or so in protests and rallies in the New York area organized by Uncut NYC, the Reverend Billy and various mainstream labor unions. I have to admit, my experiences with protest in the past have tended to be less than inspiring. The turnout was generally small. During the past spring I stood outside a Bank of America branch in mid-town chanting “B.O.A, Must Pay!” with a few dozen others. The bank and its patrons went about their business. After an hour or so, we left. No one in the press covered it as far as I know. When the occupation was in its first days the extremely sparse news coverage I found succeeded in convincing me that this was just another abortive attempt put forward by a noble but tiny minority. In the following weeks I have been happily proven wrong.
At this point, no one can deny that Occupy Wall St. has gained more attention, both from those who agree with it and those who despise it, than any protest action in recent American history. Many critics ask, “What's the point? What are they protesting?” Others, like Andrew Ross Sorkin and the entire staff of the New York Times engage in knee-jerk ad -hominem attacks, tarring the protesters as hippies, who of course would realize how utterly silly they were being if only they had to work like everyone else. Many on the left have essentially hidden behind these arguments, claiming not necessarily that they share the sentiment, but that they worry that if the movement doesn't seem serious and organized it won't be able to accomplish the good things it surely hopes to. At this point I won't be the first to make this argument, but I'm not bothered by the lack of a specific demand or narrower target. To pigeonhole the movement into this small bore thinking would be the death of it. The movement does have an open document online, with a set of demands, or what I think would be better described as a Shadow Platform, the platform of the 99%, the platform a genuine left political party might put forward were it not as hopelessly bought-and-paid-for as the current two “acceptable” parties are (I won't name them, I don't feel like gagging at the moment). To me though, simply embracing this “platform” and calling for its implementation would be to miss the point.
Before getting to what I find most promising about Occupy Wall St. please indulge me by allowing me to share some autobiographical information. I was born in November of 1979. A few months later Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. My adolescent and teenage years took place during the boom years of the 1990s when even as a high schooler I got really, really tired of hearing about rock-star CEOs and how America needed a President who “knew how to run a business.” I always found it funny that the most nationalistic, histrionic patriots were the ones comfortable equating their country with Kinkos or Ore Ida. The accepted, almost uncontested narrative in the media, the arts and society in general was, for the first twenty years of my life, that free markets are perfect, government is inept and inefficient and all the problems of the world would be solved if only some crafty entrepreneur could profit from solving them. The way for bands to be “edgy” was to claim that they were proud to have “sold-out” and that everyone was “just jealous of their success.” Being political made you tiresome. People didn't entertain the possibility that it was more than some retro, punk rock fad. It was after all, the End of History.
With the circus of the Bush administration in effect from 2000 on there were some encouraging rumblings. Of course, 9/11 was supposed to have restarted history, now with a monolithic Islamic threat to replace the discredited Communist one. During this time the Daily Show and Colbert Report became liberal pranksters, calling the media and political class out on their many hypocrisies and stupidities. It was reassuring to me to realize that enough other people saw the absurdity enough to laugh at it, an on a large enough scale for these programs to become resounding successes. Before the 04 elections, people who I'd never heard talk about politics began saying things like, “That guy's fucking crazy. Who the hell could vote for such an idiot.” Well, enough did that for the first time he (probably) actually won. Again, as the world financial system collapsed under the weight of the fraudulent instruments dreamed up by investment bankers to trade in the debt peonage they'd imposed on ninety percent of the population for thirty years it seemed like a corner had been turned. Newsweek even informed us that “We Are All Socialists Now.” Then came...The Tea Party.
What I am getting at, other than a little venting is that during my lifetime, the wealthy and powerful and the government they own have always, without any significant exception been able to buy, co-opt or discredit anything that even looked like it threatened them. Anyone in possession of even the most rudimentary bullshit detector should have seen that it wasn't a coincidence that the media whether supposedly “liberal” or “conservative” would never step out of a narrowly defined acceptability and that this “acceptability” wasn't based on what was acceptable to a majority of people, but to the people with the most economic weight to throw around. Any voice that spoke this truth during my lifetime has been relegated to the margins and ignored. Or, if gaining any prominence seemed to be neutralized in terms of inspiring any tangible action beyond a very small group of politically aware people. Even those who agreed with the dissenters were too comfortable or too disheartened to do any dissenting of their own.
Now, there is Occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party may have been for some an expression of genuine populist outrage, but it was soon distorted and corralled by the aforementioned elite into yet another hate-spewing know-nothing parade of assorted ugly Americans. So far, as someone who has participated in Occupy Wall St., I would say it has avoided a similar fate. If Occupy Wall street maintains its present character there is a good chance that it won't be used or absorbed by Obama 2012, the “Ron Paul Revolution” or for that matter, the Socialist Party USA (sorry guys). Occupy Wall Street is not yet fully formed, and the idea seems to that it can never be. The general consensus among its participants is in support of principles and policies that I think could only improve the state of things were they to be implemented, even on a piecemeal basis. (Reinstating Glass-Stegall, taxing Capital gains as income etc.) Many no doubt will fail to see how this matters if no politician who has a chance of winning office will adopt these policies. In reality, this is a triumph rather than a failure. The only way any politician of any persuasion will adopt a policy is if their corporate pay-masters tell them to. There is no significant exception to this rule If we start with support for a politician and follow with policy suggestions or the expectation that they'll do right by us, we will only be deceived and used. (See Clinton Administration 92-00/Obama Administration 08-12) We have to start with organization and a shift in consciousness, then develop policies and force whoever is in political office or the boardroom to accept that the people will no longer apathetically allow their will to be smugly ignored. (See Abolitionist/Civil Rights/ Labor/Women's Suffrage Movements).
What's inspiring to me about the movement so far is that it genuinely does seem to indicate a broad-based shift in the attitudes of many people in America. People seem to be beginning to understand that their problems are not caused by poor African-Americans on welfare, but by corporations on welfare. They may be realizing that what's really important is the empowerment and standard of living of the majority, not the one-in-a-million chance that they'll be the next filthy rich bastard who doesn't have to pay any taxes. Everyone who is inspired by the persistence of Occupy Wall Street and the many Occupations around the nation that it has inspired can take heart that they are not alone and that together they can only be ignored for so long. In trying to operate using consensus based decision making they are creating a model for how direct democracy might function if money wasn't the all-important factor it is today. In contrast to the times I've lived through so far, it seems that people just might finally be re-discovering the understanding of class and social power that are a necessary precursor the process of positive change described above.
When Andrew Ross Sorkin finally wrote his compulsory disdainful article about Occupy Wall Street, he framed it as a little research he was doing for an unnamed CEO acquaintance, who'd asked him if he should “fear this thing.” It sounds like he already does, he should, and the fact that he does has strengthened my dedication to doing whatever I can to make sure he and his ilk can't continue to flippantly oppress and abuse everyone they've pushed to the bottom with their greed.
