It would seem that a populist uprising against corporate greed would find a widely approving audience, yet the current occupation of Wall Street has mostly been received with a mix of muted support and mockery. The now week old protest, which has been reported to have attracted several hundred activists this past weekend, is struggling to be understood.
There is no leader, by design, and the demands are still being formed by General Assemblies, a loose group of protesters who gather to discuss their grievances with what they see as a system that takes from the middle class and poor and protects the rich. They represent what they call “the 99%,” the population outside of top 1% of income earners.
Protesters complained early on that they were not receiving attention from mainstream media, so they took to social media, using the hashtag #occupywallst (and apparently spreading to #occupyboston #occupyLA #occupydenver #occupytexas #occupynola #occupychi #occupyphoenix as well,) sharing minute by minute accounts on Twitter, posting photos and video, and live streaming nearly the entire time.
The claims that there is a lack of mainstream coverage doesn’t seem to hold water, and could simply be a ploy to encourage even more coverage. The protests have been covered by Reuters, The New York Times, and major networks. Anonymous and Ad Busters are major promoters and loose organizers of the protests but the movement doesn’t appear to be born directly from the groups.
Are they a mob of over-privileged, unemployed trustafarians? Many of them likely are. Does it matter? Dismiss them if you will, they’re motivated and mobilized. An apathetic population asked to foot the bill for the fallout from credit default swaps is exactly what the 1% ordered. The last few years the country has been told to fear an economic collapse if the masses fail to fork over what amounts to corporate welfare, and more recently, that more jobs will be lost if we close tax loopholes. Many claim that these protesters are anti-capitalist, but most are simply disillusioned by a form of capitalism they suggest is so far out of whack that the opportunity for bootstrap pulling is nearly non-existent. They propose that the current environment unapologetically favors the richest of the rich.
There is concern, by people like Ginia Bellafonte the New York Times, that these protesters are simply flakes. These are a “noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people.” She refers to the gathering as a “carnival” and uses quotes of ridiculous demands, to “get rid of the combustion engine” and their muddled unfocused kaleidoscope of “liberal” causes: “concerns about the death penalty, the drug war, the environment.”
Bellafonte paints the picture so it can be easy for the comfortable Times readers to dismiss these seemingly misguided youth. Where have I heard this before? If you’re someone of my age, a thirty-something, ask your parents. Chances are they were once young and “misguided” and maybe even motivated by the likes of merry pranksters like Abbie Hoffman. Many of them likely would easily have identified with these so-called court jesters. Every movements starts somewhere and often it begins with very lofty ideas and few well-defined tactics. A week in, their goal was simply to do exactly what their namesake describes: occupy and control the public space in or near Wall Street, to have their presence felt and voices heard, even while they haven’t yet found the words.
To give Bellafonte the benefit of the doubt, even a supporter, in the form of successful tech entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly, was disheartened by the attire and approach of the protesters, if not the cause. If only the protesters dressed more formally, acted like grownups and came with a power-point presentation outlining their demands, maybe they’d be taken more seriously.
This weekend, the police, who up until then had been relatively docile, began to flex their muscles. Photos and videos documented alleged incidents of police brutality:
(links via Pantless Progressive)
Police pen up and mace female protesters [Raw Story]
Young man arrested simply for walking down the street [laurasthinkingwithportals]
Protester thrown over barricade by police [Video shot by Daniel Fitzsimmons, link via evanfleischer]
Protester shouts, “Is this what you’re about?”, gets cuffed [@LibertyPlazaRev]
Officer pushes sitting protester, man stands up, cops arrest him [@LilKing420s]
Cops Tackle, Mace Wall St. Protesters for No Obvious Reason [Gawker]
The movement has been steadfast in imploring members to remain non-violent, in response to apparent police violence.
For every Ginia Bellafonte, they have a Chris Hedges, a Noam Chomksy and an Amy Goodman. While Bellafonte found the silliest in the crowd to quote, Goodman found David Graeber who teaches at the University of London.
“For the last 30 years, we’ve seen a political battle being waged by the super-rich against everyone else, and this is the latest move in the shadow dance, which is completely dysfunctional economically and politically. It’s the reason why young people have just abandoned any thought of appealing to politicians. We all know what’s going to happen. The tax proposals are a sort of mock populist gesture, which everyone knows will be shot down. What will actually probably happen would be more cuts to social services.”
Perhaps that kind of quote doesn’t fit into the neat narrative of misguided, yet noble, cast of characters wasting their wealthy parents money at a sleepover in the park that Bellafonte was looking to portray. I’m not naive enough to think Graeber is representative of the crowd as a whole, but I also haven’t had the last ounce of idealism beaten out of me to think the inmates are completely running the asylum. The answer, I think, lies somewhere in between and if successful and given time to evolve, could inspire others in America to find the will and motivation to finally stop allowing themselves to be taken advantage of.
The Wall Street protest has Americans struggling with just who these people are and what they represent. So, naturally, they are also questioning their true motivations. Many view OWS as a “spontaneous” extension of President Obama’s own war on the rich which seemed to have conveniently reached a crescendo just as the first protesters appeared on Wall Street.
Others suspect, along with many of the conservative pundits, that it is a George Soros-backed conspiracy to stoke the anti-capitalist flames. And, there are others who see it as a ploy by the unions to build up their stature and their ranks.
Due to the lack of a coherent message or rational demand out of this largely disjointed association of activists, Americans are having trouble accepting it as a pure, grass-roots movement with legitimate intentions. The circus like, and borderline violent atmosphere, as opposed to the serious Tea Party demeanor, raises skepticism that the Wall Street protest is nothing more than a ploy to distract the American public from the abyssmal job performance of the current administration.
Having spread from Wall Street to main street it has garnered much more media attention, but the focus is as much on its unruliness and non-conformity as it is on any cogent message it is trying to convey.
Whether it is real or not, opportunistic or sincere, it is bringing to a much brighter light what most Americans are already sensing – that the country is sinking further into economic distress and the last drops of optimism have evaporated into a dark cloud of uncertainty. That a small number of people, although misguided and largely misinformed, would stand up to fight for jobs and their share of influence over policy making decisions, doesn’t seem so extreme or radical to the average American.
No one would argue with the need for more urgent action to turn the economy around. And, you won’t find too many people siding with the very institutions that, through their incessant hunger for profits, were willing accomplices to one of the worst financial calamities in our history.
In fact, at their core, the grievances that form the basis of many of its demands are shared by people on both sides of the aisle. Even Tea Partiers find little to fault with OWS’s assault on crony capitalism and lack of accountability of Wall Street’s complicity in the financial crisis. They just believe that their anger is misdirected.
The Tea Party see’s the government and its designs on the people’s liberties as the root of all evil, while the OWS crowd sees Wall Street, the banks and corporate America as the evil doers. While there is enough blame to spread around, the reality is that, by targeting the private sector, the protesters are biting the hands that feed them – literally.
True, many of the protesters are recipients of government handouts – many are unemployed and a good number are receiving some sort of welfare. But, the government isn’t going to give them a job, and it certainly doesn’t produce the many products and technological innovations that they are now enjoying even as they mount their assault on capitalism. By disrupting the thousands of local businesses, the wall street protest are hurting the economies of dozens of cities which will only exacerbate the financial distress of their communities.
If instead, they joined hands and marched, peacefully, on Washington and targeted the politicians who perpetuate the crony capitalism they abhor, and who have broken their promises to “fix” Wall Street and get the lobbyists out of the White House, and who, through their actions or in-actions, are suppressing the ability of businesses to generate more jobs, they will have a much greater impact.
Instead of coalescing around an unpopular campaign (1% versus the 99%) to pit the rich against the middle class, it is only going to stoke the fires of the President and other leftist politicians who have been trying the same strategy without success. The people don’t want to hear it.
The problem for OWS, is that, with no clear leadership and no clearly articulated message, they have been, and are still in the process of being hijacked by every activist group or whacko cause out there, and now the unions, the Marxists and the politicians are co-opting the movement for their own purposes.
While all of the added support and encouragement from these groups has emboldened the movement and made its voice louder, all it has really done is made it more shrill and even more disjointed. Add to the soup, the infiltration by every homeless person, drug addict, ageless hippie and teen in search of a rave party, and you have a spectacle that few Americans can relate too, which is unfortunate.
Everyone from the Fed Chairman to Warren Buffet, from Hollywood liberals to conservative talk show hosts, from Tea Partiers to the President, agree that the anger is real, the outrage is justified, and that Wall Street and the politicians need to be held to account for the malaise in which we find ourselves. But the assault on the private sector and capitalism is misguided.
Capitalism has done nothing but create prosperity for all who actively participate in it. It’s the Washington politicians who, throughout history, have tried to control capitalism that have inflicted the damage. That’s where OWS needs to go right now.