#OccupyWallStreet has been drawing complaints that it doesn't have a demand and a goal. But I say that is precisely its significance.
#OccupyWallStreet is a hashtag revolt. As I learned with my own little #FuckYouWashington uprising, a hashtag has no owner, no heirarchy, no canon or credo. It is a blank slate onto which anyone may impose his or her frustrations, complaints, demands, wishes, or principles.
So I will impose mine. #OccupyWallStreet, to me, is about institutional failure. And so it is appropriate that #OccupyWallStreet itself is not run as an institution.
We don't trust institutions anymore. Name a bank or financial institution you can trust today. That industry was built entirely on trust -- we entrusted our money to their cloud -- and they failed us. Government? The other day, I heard a cabinet member from a prior administration call Washington "paralyzed and poisonous" -- and he's an insider. Media? Pew released a study last week saying that three-quarters of Americans don't believe journalists get their facts straight (which is their only job). Education? Built for a prior, institutional era. Religion? Various of its outlets are abusing children or espousing bigotry or encouraging violence. The #OccupyWallStreet troops are demonizing practically all of corporate America and with it, capitalism. What institutions are left? I can't name one.
In a Foreign Affairs essay in 2008, Richard Haass argued that the world is moving from bi- and unipolarity (that is, the Cold War and its aftermath) to nonpolarity (i.e., no one's in charge). "We now operate in an open marketplace of influence," I wrote in my last book. "One need no longer control institutions to control agendas."
Now one needs a network. #OccupyWallStreet is that network, the headless tail. Even it's not sure what it is. Indeed, I think it would have been better off not issuing a manifesto written by a committee of the whole park, going after even animal rights and ending with its own Ninth Amendment: "*These grievances are not all-inclusive." Henry Blodget mocks many of their demands. Feminisnt says they aren't specific enough. They can't win.
But I think they are already winning. #OccupyWallStreet is a start and it is growing, as Micah Sifry wrote: "There's something happening here, Mr. Jones."
What's happening is an attempt to define a new public, now that we can. Iceland, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are all countries being reimagined and remade: start-up nations. Hear Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir talk about building a new constitution, using Facebook, on the principles of "equality, transparency, accountability, and honesty" -- liberté, égalité, fraternité, updated for the networked age.
In the end, this is why I wrote Public Parts, because we have the tools and thus the opportunity to rethink and reorganize our publics and decide what they stand for. The power and freedom that Gutenberg's press brought to the early modern era, our networked tools now bring everyone in this, the early digital age. "They empower us. They grant us the ability to create, to connect, to organize, and to aggregate our knowledge.... They lower borders, even challenging our notion of nations." That's what the youth of these countries are doing.
Media have mocked the denizens of #OccupyWallStreet as scruffy, young hippies. But you should have seen me -- and more of media's bosses than you can imagine -- in '68. Scruffy, simplistic, bombastic, angry, determined, self-righteous, right, and high -- that was us. Media dismissed us just as they dismiss the denizens of Zuccotti Park. Authorities thought they could round up all the '68ers in Grant Park, just as they do now on the Brooklyn Bridge.
When I visited #OccupyWallStreet's park Friday, I wore a sport coat. I had to because earlier that day, I had a meeting at a place where they wear them. But I'm glad I brought it, for it's time to show that #OccupyWallStreet represents more than scruffy young leftists. I don't say that for a moment to denigrate them and their spirit. They built #OccupyWallStreet. No, I say it's time for more of us to follow their leadership and join them, to show that what they represent -- the anger, the determination, and the inherent hope -- speaks for more of us, even people in suits.
What #OccupyWallStreet has done with considerable success -- as the best hashtags and publics do -- is open a conversation, one we must have, about the shape of our nation and society and future. If you don't like their manifesto and demands, fine: What are yours?
At the end of Public Parts, I present mine, knowing they aren't the right ones but urging people to enter a conversation not about complaints or demands but instead about the principles of our new and open society.
I don't think #OccupyWallStreet is or should be about just venting anger or demonizing business or complaining or demanding. Indeed, of whom are we making these demands? The failed institutions? The ones our networks will disrupt if not displace? I say the message of #OccupyWallStreet should be more hopeful than that: building a new and open public based on the principles of a society that will replace the dying institutions and their ways.
Follow Jeff Jarvis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffjarvis
Kelly Cogswell: So You Want to Be an Activist?
This is the absolute, most perfect example of what republicans have been espousing , That would be what?
Taking Personal Responsibility !
So you're excited about either complete economic collapse or violent revolution in the USA. You think those places are something to emulate, and you think the Constitution should be rewritten using Facebook. Well, at least one of you was willing to (almost) come out and say that's what you wanted.
But you're not going to get it.
Where is the accountability and transparency we were promised by Obama.
We are The 99% and we want Justice .
http://alexeybraguine.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/wall-street-protests/
I posit that the rich have successfully thwarted new competition, through corruption in government, influence in courts, complicit activities with the military industrial complex and multinational corporations.
Vital innovation are left unfunded, such that new jobs provided by brand new companies - Startups never happen. Don't take my word for it. Listen to the Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship:
Job Growth in U.S. Driven Entirely by Startups, According to Kauffman Foundation Study
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/u-s-job-growth-driven-entirely-by-startups.aspx
"When it comes to U.S. job growth, startup companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing."
Here's one Startup that vows to keep ALL jobs it creates in the USA, sustained by exports of its innovative and vital product worldwide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csa459eSZr8
But will it ever have the necessary opportunity in this current environment? This radical but effective movement in Wall Street may make all the difference.
Not long ago, big banks never risked the whole bundle on dubious bets, the way they did in '08. When America was at its peak, banks were were conservative, cautious, dull institutions. And that was a good thing. In the years between the Depression and deregulation, banks never got too high during booms, but never collapsed during busts. They provided the steady, dependable safety net beneath the economy's high-flyers and risk-takers; they weren't high-flyers and risk takers themselves.
In contrast, there was no deregulation frenzy in Canada, so Canadian banks still conduct themselves as sober, conservative institutions. It came as no surprise to anyone paying attention that the crash of '08 didn't affect Canada nearly as bad as it did the US.
All the protesters want, if I read them right, is for American banks to be stodgy again. The best and brightest members of this new generation want themselves, not banks, to be the ones to dream the big dreams, take the big risks, and either hit the jackpot or crap out -- just as their parents and grandparents did. They want individuals and private companies, not federally insured financial institutions, to be taking the big chances in the free market. It really doesn't get more conservative than that.
The thing is, 99% of us are getting screwed! THAT'S what this movement is about. When more of the 99% get behind this, specifics will become much easier to identify.
Obvious issues would include banking and finance reforms, healthcare reform....
For the last 30 years those who should have known better turned away from the common good to feed personal greed. Though there were many, experts and not, who decried the profitizing of everything, their voices were drown out by the pounding of bonsus, perc and every growing executive salaries. Meanwhile, people who actually worked for a living, whether at Wal-Mart or at a national company saw real wages declines as they were asked to pick up more and more of their "benefits" cost.
For Joe and Jane Public it was and is a lose, lose situation.
So OCUPPY WALL STREET and any other street where those who tanked the economy congregate. Insist on laws that punish those we profited while others lost homes, jobs and futures.
It's up to us to support the protesters in every way possible.
Like that little old institution called law, you mean? Which if adhered to, by the letter, might have buttressed all the others combined.
"An open marketplace of influence"
Hereafter known as the new wild wild west?
"a new constitution"
Wot! When the old one’s hardly worn, though a complete lack of use?