Just one more old lady gripe about the kids on my lawn, and then I’ll find something else to write about — please do read this post by Ian Welsh, which I think is spot on.
For Occupy to be successful, on its own terms, will require shutting down Wall Street and probably all of NYC. There must be so many people on the street that it is impossible to arrest them all or to get rid of them without resorting to a lot more than a whiff of grapeshot. The elites must be be faced with a decision tree “negotiate or lose a ton of money and be massively inconvenienced or shoot hundreds of thousands of people and build mass detention camps.†That will require two or three million people occupying New York City. …
… If you want politicians to take out Wall Street for you, it has to be worth their while. Either the Koch Brothers have to pay them to take out one part of the elite on behalf of another part of the elite, or they have to know that not only will they lose their positions if they don’t do it (remember, the Soviet Politburo had more turnover than the Senate does) but that they will never have a good job afterwards, that whatever monied interests they have served either will not be able to give them a good life afterwards, or they will be unable to enjoy that good life.
OWS has gotten remarkably sympathetic press so far, but I’m still not seeing an indication that they know how to make a movement. People say “go down there and see for yourself,” but folks, 99 percent of Americans are not going to be able to see the protests for themselves. What they know of OWS they’re going to know through mass media. You can wrinkle your nose at media all you want, but we’re still not at a place that a smart Twitter campaign can override what gets on the TeeVee when it comes to affecting public opinion.
Many commenters have said they smell fear on Wall Street. I think Krugman is right —
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.
This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.
The Powers That Be are going to crush OWS like a bug unless it gets too big to fail, and fast.
Nevertheless, whether targeted at dictators or corporate greed, protests alone — however impressive in their numbers or disruptive in effect — do not make a movement. The revolutionary pretensions of a youthful counter-culture aside, Occupy Wall Street must become genuinely representative of the vast majority of Americans now struggling as a result of inordinate corporate power and political influence, reflecting also the legitimate aspirations of small business owners, small farmers, and working families of the poor and middle-class majority whose voices in the established political process are too often drowned out by powerful corporate interests.
The OWS declaration is a frustrating document. While I don’t specifically disagree with any of it, it reflects the biases and restricted views of the core group. It’s a self-indulgent mess that’s not going to mean squat to the small business owners, small farmers, and working families of the poor and middle-class majority.
Like it or not, if this thing is going to be too big too fail, it’s got to include people who are squeamish about gay rights, love the military, and support the death penalty. It’s got to include people who don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s going on overseas and who don’t see the big deal with confining calves to veal crates. That’s not what I want; that’s the reality of it.
No, the hard core baggers will not join, because they’d rather sell their children to David Koch than join anything that looks “liberal,” but there’s a vast pool of Americans who are not baggers, but neither are they all that liberal. And you can’t rightfully claim “we are the 99 percent” without the support of that pool.
On the other hand, it’s curious to me that reproductive rights aren’t in the soup anywhere. I’m not saying it should be, just that the document too obviously was mostly written by guys.
A couple of lines stand out —
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
True, but the Affordable Care Act addresses that. It’s supposed to stop in 2014. Keep up.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
The real issue is that the U.S. is the only industrialized country that doesn’t control the price of drugs, and the Medicare Part D program is basically a taxpayer-funded giveaway to Big Pharma.
Really, I want OWS to succeed. My fear is that if it fails, it’s going to be that much harder to start something else later.
The financial sector does not make laws so as long as the laws continue to aid and abet its fraudulent practices, nothing is going to change. It’s not about to ‘reform’ itself.
The OWS group should be protesting on the steps of Congress, before the building housing the Supreme Court, and in front of the Oval Office – where the laws are made, sanctioned and signed. (Politicians, it’s the nature of the beast, are uncomfortable with overt signs of being unpopular.)
I’ll be satisfied if OWS merely succeeds in making it allowable to talk about the inequity and excess. I realize that most of those participating will want more actual change, but I’ll take moving the Overton Window over a little, so that all of us who feel screwed by the way the Powers That Be have been running the System feel like it’s OK to be mad as hell about all that, and there’s something to do about it.
Perhaps I naively expect that, once enough people start down that road, it will snowball, whether or not the OWS people have specific demands, or organization, and that good will come of it. I don’t know. But I’m so sick of all the Silence as we uncover yet-another-round of title fraud, or improper foreclosures, or bank profits, etc. If OWS can get the conversation started about how WRONG it is, I’ll be grateful.
Which is why I hope they stop letting jerks from the American Spectator become provacateurs, and doing dumb things like protesting drones at museums.
Biggerbox — as I see it, there are four ways this thing can go —
1. It fails to catch on beyond the progressive left, and dies, and is forgotten by January.
2. It fails to catch on beyond the progressive left, and becomes more radical as the founding group gets frustrated by lack of momentum.
3. It gets co-opted by the Democratic Party and the “establishment” liberal left, and becomes just another part of the political landscape.
4. It does catch on beyond the progressive left and becomes a genuine force to be reckoned with.
Obviously, the last option is ideal. But for that to happen, it’s got to get bigger than the sum of its current parts. Option #2 is the worst; it poisons the well for future attempts to build a mass movement against economic injustice. If we get option #1, we’ll see if the kids are capable of learning from their mistakes (and listen to the crabby old ladies next time). And I think #3 would render it ineffectual. And I think any of those four options are possible. So we’ll see.
Are you on the outside looking in or helping to make Occupy Wall Street too big to fail?
Silver Owl — there is no way I’d be given a voice on the “inside.” I’m too old, too female, and am unable to put in the time to be physically present.
I think there’s an Option 2a, which is worse still: it becomes more radical and moves into electoral politics as a Naderite 3rd party. Which would have the practical effect of helping the radical reactionary GOP take over the country.
I don’t see #4 happening. I think the best we can possibly hope for is #3; at least if they’re ineffectual they aren’t actively causing any harm.
Truthdig has an article on the mega-multi-millionaires who profited big-time in practicing what OWS is protesting against. I fail to understand, I should say connect the agenda of the protesters with the ultimate collapse of their fortunes, a lengthy term in the penitentiary, or a folding of their various businesses.
Nor are they likely to suddenly have changes of heart, feel sorry for the millions, worldwide, whom they’ve screwed, or cease and desist from doing the same things again. Why would they? So, I continue to believe that in conjunction with taking to their rage to WS, they’ve got to take the same rage to DC.
Mahablog – There is an option 1a – which is that the protesters are crushed by overt force. As Krugman points out, some people don’t want questions of income inequality to be raised. Waiting for OWS to die a natural death because the MSM is flirting questions that MUST NOT BE SPOKEN TO THE MASSES!
You will see option 1a in force when the powers-that-be decree that in the interests of public health and safety, demonstrations will be limited to 15 people every other Sunday. Or a variation on that theme. That will provoke civil disobedience – leading to arrests. CUND GULAG is probably right – that’s when the conservative ratfuckers will engage in violence and try to blame it on liberals. OWS has to be way ahead of that, make citizens arrests on the spot so the perps can be identified as conservatives. (post-arrest) Otherwise, OWS gets branded as vandals by the media.This happened in Egypt – the crowds turned lawbreakers over to the army.
I’m surprised that hasn’t happened already. If Zuccotti were a public park, it would have happened already. The property actually is privately owned, and the day will come when the owners are going to want their space back. I doubt they’re going to be allowed to stay there over the winter, in any event, and they need to come to grips with that.
My suggestion (which of course they won’t take) would be to announce they are moving on to the next phase of the movement, then have a small rotating crew that can maintain a presence on the property, but send everyone else out into the world to organize elsewhere. They could still have larger one-day demonstrations where everyone shows up and then goes back home.
We’ll see if they’re up to that.
That column by that ratfucker in the American Spectator will be the template for more Reich-wing ratfucking.
Every knuckledragging moronic troglodyte who’s able will be encouraged to put down their Cheeto’s and Mountain Dew, get out of their computer chairs, haul their fat asses up out of their Mom’s basement, and go to their local OWS protest, infliltrate, and ratfuck to their tiny heartless hearts content.
The young demonstrators will have to take a long hard look at the new people coming into the movement, to police their own, to determine whether that person over there is an overly enthusiastic protester, or a ruthless ratfucking clown, bent on undermining the movement. And to stifle any, and I mean, any impulses towards violence! Those impulses will come from the ratfuckers.
And never mind that, conomincally, most of these ratfuckers should be with the 99%ers. But, their long-term futures won’t matter to them when they can do something to piss off the Liberals today.
And if only story they’ll be able to tell anyone willing to listen when they’re older, penniless, and living in a run-down single-wide shared by3-4 other piss-poor morons, is how they undermined the Liberals protesting the rich, they’ll do it with pride!
Beware the ratfuckers! They are coming!!!
If option “1a” actually happens, in a way that is obvious that that is what is happening, that would essentially make option 4 much, MUCH more likely.
The “bigger asshole” theory rules … drum circles provoke only hippy jokes, split heads and maced prisoners have the potential to provoke nationwide sympathy and ultimately support.
This is why there will be no overt “1a”.
And if I’m wrong, if the PTB are stupid enough to actually start with the dogs and the firehoses, we get to see whether or not the soul of this country has degraded to the point that even that will fail to wake people. Either way, we’ll know something important about this country.
-Ian
It can go both ways. I well remember much of American blaming the Kent State demonstrators for getting themselves shot back in 1970. If the OWS protesters are not widely perceived as people deserving of some sympathy, the public may be unmoved. That’s why how they present themselves to the public now can make or break them later.
Unfortunately the only thing that protests and demonstrations usually accomplish is getting some people’s attention. It is not like they are slowing down or stopping anything like when someone stages a work strike and shuts down airlines, trains, transport trucks, you know, the usual union type of organized protest. The whole Tea Party idea was nonsense, also. The original Boston Tea Party was a bunch of the same revolutionary patriots who dressed themselves in a disguise similar to native American Indians’ style of dress and borded a ship in harbor which usually has armed guards and destroyed the whole cargo with axes and hatchets. That doesn’t sound nonviolent to me. Not only had they chased the guards away with their dress and manner, they also scared off any witnesses who might have happened on them, accidently. It was like a mob hit. No one who saw it wanted to report anything. All any peaceful protest gets is media attention to let someone know they are upset or disagree with an issue.
Actually the head of FAUX NEWS admitted that the Tea Baggers were letting you know what Roger Ailes wanted them to be upset about. I read an article that said the Occupy Wall Street Protest was closer to what the actual original Boston Tea Party was about. Actually they both are far from being close. The original Boston Tea Party was anything but nonviolent.
The OWS people have been recently joined by the unions and that will demand, as has been mentioned, screening out agitators and instigators which have already been present. The problem for the Agitators is that WE CAN SEE THEM, unlike years in the past, everything that is being done now, thanks to the police violence ala Rodney King, is videotaped. The reason for the resent pepper spray and nightstick attack (and I saw all the tapes leading up to and after that incident) was originally over taking a professional grade video camera away from a demonstrator. Anyone who looked at them wrong after that was either drug under the barrier and kneeled on by several policemen at once (one lady had 5 set of cops’ knees on her head and back) and beaten with night sticks and arrested OR the few young petite little ladies at the end of the procession were making faces and yelling for them to stop and they got full on pepper spray in the face. One of those women was deaf and when they blinded her she was completely defenseless and expecting to be beaten like the others while in that condition so she started screaming. No one who saw it thought anyone who did that was doing doing the right thing for a peaceful demonstration. The two key videos of that day are at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA&feature=player_embedded and http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=5rbXfelyIoM and I am going to say something that some pro-NYC PD people might not consider correct, but the fact remains that under pressure the police are supposed to be able to react properly to being jeered at, taunted, etc. that is part of their job. This time it was the demonstators who got the brunt of the abuse. As has been pointed out some people of the conservative persuasion were trying to act like they were part of the movement and then did several things to anger the locals, but as those words escape some of the locals mouths, they still don’t seem to be seeing the whole picture. There were reports of vandalism and this shows who was actually doing the things that set off the local businesses. As was said people infiltrated to make them look like a bunch of dirty morons who were homeless troublemakers instead of intelligent people who normally have other things to do, like go to college. The deaf lady was pepper sprayed because the officer (if one watches the slow motion clip on YouTube) with the pepper spray was following and aiming at an older woman with a camera. She walked past the younger girls and into the corner just before the spraying incident happened. So the young deaf woman was standing facing the guy who full on sprayed this cayenne spray into her eyes, nose, etc. which if you have ever attended a block watch demonstration, you know, is supposed to be sprayed in a cloud for the offender to walk into, not full force as it closes your breathing off through shutting all mucous membranes. She obviously just sat down and started wailing as that is like having a bucket of hot sauce thrown on your face, up your nose, in down your throat into your lungs. It did get everyone’s attention but I tnink that was inevitable without the police riot. One thing I would point out for anyone who think the police in NYC were spot on with their actions is that, as mentioned, most of the policemen previous to the attack on the few on camera, were quite cooperative with the protesters since they belong to the Fraternal Order Of Police , another form of labor union. The police should be on their side but when one idiot lost it and crossed the line, they had to defend him by beating on someone who filmed it and everything else went to hell from there. Recently some Buddhist monks had self immolated themselves in protest. That was praised by some. I think priorities need to be defined here. Is non-violent protest enough? It seems to have worked for Gandhi and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I truly and sincerely hope that there is a positive outcome from OWS and the other Occupy events that are springing up. I really do hope that.
But I am sitting out here in rural, western Ohio and wish I knew of a way to help the Occupiers. I have too many critters that need daily attention to leave home to protest.
Would large yard signs do any good? (protected speech, dontcha know).
Any thoughts?
Chief,
There are all sorts of links to send food to them, most of them are pizza.
Here’s a pizza one, and some others:
http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/09/27/a-list-of-food-trucks-who-will-deliver-to-occupy-wall-street/
I was going to add, before someone beat me to it, Send Food!
Speaking of ratfuckers, James O’Keefe was spotted at OWS, possibly violating parole.
Unless the economy magically transforms itself, OWS isn’t going away. My guess is that the core elements will become radicalized, while the entire movement will continue to be a magnet for anybody with nothing left to lose (which includes nearly everyone under the age of 25 who isn’t military), and the numbers of that contingent will only be growing, until the economy turns around.
While you lament the fact that this movement lacks leaders, one advantage of being leaderless is that the head cannot be cut off, and so the PTB will have a harder time coming to grips with it.
Eventually push will come to shove, and the gloves will come off, and this will determine who is serious or not. Am glad you linked to Ian Welsh’s article – he has a way of cutting to the chase.
Arizona Mildman, do learn to break up your writing with white space – these tired old eyes need help cutting through your vast forest of words. A pity, because you probably put a lot of thought into what you wrote.
Krugman made an elementary error of political grammar. He said, Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe are in a morally indefensible position, “and yet” they have paid no price. But those two little words “and yet” imply an expectation which few have now. I think it would have been far more apt had Krugman said that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe are in a morally indefensible position, “and _therefore_” they have paid no price.
Gosh, you’d think a fan of Buddhism would appreciate how OWS’ structure makes it virtually un-hijackable by the standard hacks trying to neuter it and/or use it for their own ends. If the only way you can see OWS being useful is by turning into a get-out-the-vote vehicle for Democrats, then you’re not going to get the point of OWS.
But here’s something that should cheer up Maha: Suits! Coming to OWS! For realz!
http://my.firedoglake.com/tobywollin/2011/10/11/tactical-camouflage-comes-to-wall-street/
Instead, it’s on the edge of being hijacked by flakes and fringies trying to use it for their own ends.
Not what I said at all. Please learn to read.
OK, I’m sorry to be snippy, but I’m seeing OWS make the same stupid mistakes that I’ve been seeing lefties make for 50 years now, and I’m sick to death of explaining the same damn thing over and over and over to people who have their fingers stuck in their ears screaming LA LA LA I DON’T HEAR YOU.
If you want demonstrations to actually work, study the way the early civil rights movement functioned under Martin Luther King. That actually did some good. Instead, everybody tries to replay the 1960s counterculture and antiwar movement, which ended up being dupes of the establishment. And please don’t be so tiresome as to suggest that the antiwar movement ended the Vietnam war; it did not. I’m sick to death of explaining why that’s true also, but here’s a research paper that’s not too far off.
…and as usual I hit “Submit Comment” too soon:
Maha, if you think that the OWS Declaration was wacky, what do you think of the Declaration on which it was very blatantly based? (Hint: One uses “He has” a lot and was written in the summer of 1776; the other uses “They have” a lot and was written in the fall of 2011.) Hell, Magna Carta (the Brits never use the definite article when referencing the Great Charter’s Latin title) reads just as wackily, especially to modern ears (and really especially if you happen to be Jewish), and worse yet wasn’t intended to benefit more than a few noblemen at the Crown’s expense, yet it was what made both Declarations possible.
Actually, it reminds me more of the Port Huron statement produced by the original Students for a Democratic Society in 1962, and which was arrived by by a process similar to the one that generated by OWS declaration. And I still agree with most of Port Huron, as I agree with the OWS declaration, but the fact is that in eight years of organizing SDS didn’t accomplish squat except to help elect Richard Nixon.