A video from day 14 of the Occupy Wall Street protests shows an impressively huge crowd flowing through the arches of the NYPD headquarters in New York City. The crowd is chanting: "The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching!" While that may not be the case yet, we're getting there. And that brings up a pretty big problem for the protesters and the future of the movement: If the whole world does end up watching, what exactly will they be watching?
Like lots of leftists, I'm inspired by this movement, and elated that it's happening. But I'm deeply worried it could end up falling upon the sword of its own self-imposed ambiguity. Nothing sums up that ambiguity better than a quote from a recent article on the protests:
When [a protester was] asked how long he was planning to be there [he replied]... "Until change is made to the financial structure."
What that change might look like, no one can say for sure.
Here's what the occupiers are getting absolutely right: protesting and gaining attention for it. The world needs to know that there are those among us who are ready to take action, and not stand by while a ruthless, soulless elite hijacks our civilization and flies it into the ground.
But besides declaring "we're not going to take it" -- which is certainly an important thing -- the only other declaration the protesters have made is "we're angry, we're fed up, and we believe in a better world." And that's what they're doing wrong. Public outrage with the status quo is not news to anyone.
What the world needs to hear is an answer to the questions: "Where do we go from here? Is there a truly workable alternative to capitalism? How do we solve the myriad crises of capitalism?"
I understand there is a natural allergy among the protesters to taking this awesome amorphous mass of people power they've assembled and solidifying it around a core set of leaders or defined principles. And indeed, there are plenty of good reasons to avoid entrusting the voice and vision of the movement to a spokesperson. This is a people's movement; it's not a search for a messiah of hope to pull us out of dark times. It's about learning to pull ourselves out.
But while you don't need a spokesperson, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have "spokes-principles" -- a core set of ideas or answers to the crises of the Wall-Street Empire that speak for you, that communicate who you are to a public that's tuning in more and more every day.
Without that set of spokes-principles, the public may have sympathy for the protesters' motives, but it will ultimately fear their objectives. And the organizers will have done the world a great disservice by earning a big public spotlight and failing to shine it on answers that the world urgently needs to know and start talking about if we're going to have a fighting chance of saving our civilization.
The right spokes-principles can encompass all of the fluid, diverse, populist beauty and verve of the protests and channel it into a vision that the broader public can see itself and its aspirations reflected in.
If it's about anything, Occupy Wall Street is about challenging the economic imperialism of Wall Street. Naturally then, the movement's spokes-principles should be the principles of economic democracy as roughly defined here:
This Declaration of Economic Democracy is by no means an exhaustive list. But it is an endlessly expansive one. One that is broad enough in its framework to incorporate and synthesize the wide diversity of dreams, grievances, demands and aspirations of the many people involved in the protests. It's one that can help the broader public understand and identify with the movement, and help the movement build an identity that's powerful enough to bring down the Wall and build a better world.
Follow Keith Harrington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kharring
Kelly Cogswell: So You Want to Be an Activist?
Will Bunch: What I Saw at the Revolution
Phil Aroneanu: Why Environmentalists Should Occupy Wall Street
"Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion. "
http://www.p-ced.com/1/about/background/
All it takes is for the people who are currently ON Wall Street to ask the people in the offices behind the walls of Wall Street whether they can even come up with the sligthest clue as to why reckless maximization of shareholder value for firms within the financial sector even has any chance whatsoever to not require bailouts on a regular basis in order to not go bankrupt every couple of years.
The answer is: they don't have an answer. They have ZERO legitimacy. As simple as that.
They may tell all kinds of fancy stuff about why it's all so terribly complicated. But if all of that just adds up to the reuslt that not even the tycoons can provide a shred of evidence why it COULD work, there comes a moment where reform is quite inevitable.
As a starting point, how about what the Tea Party was about before it was hijacked by the far right, " Stop the looting and start prosecuting."
Karl Denninger, one of the original Tea Party founders, elaborates on this and six more points that should be common ground for the Wall Street protesters in his blog at:
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=195248
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html
How would any of those ideas get through our current government, or even one slightly more responsive that we could elect in our current, rigged political system? Until Citizens United is fixed and there is the opportunity for a multitude of voices and political parties -- I don't see how any of those things (all of which I support and want) can happen.
I'm eager, though, to learn, if anyone sees another viable mechanism or has some other crazy-good plan (Constitutional Convention?). Seems to me campaign finance reform has to be first, so we have a chance of electing like-minded people. Then electoral reform, once those like-minded people win enough votes. Then we can aim for doing the things most Americans say they want (like your list of demands).
Until then, we have to keep winning over the 99%. Join us.
It's clear we're not going to get anything done in Congress until 2013. Maybe it's time to exercise that Constitutional alternative, and put pressure on state lawmakers to propose the amendment...
Puts a whole different spin on things, doesn't it?
Any customer could have gone to a different branch to withdraw.
BOA isn't refusing anyone access to their money.
If people will be empowered for making economic decisions for others, how will THEY be regulated from cronyism and or incompetence?
The proposed tar-sands pipeline is an ecological disaster waiting to happen and a give-away to the Koch bros. Global Warming regardless the reasons why, and scientists think they know why, is a very real threat to our nation and the world; the EPA if focused on real strong protections for our water, air and other corporate rapes of our environment is essential to our kids future. Amnesty for the overseas profits of greedy creeps who are stealing the American dream so they can profit by exporting factories and our jobs? BS! Evasions by corporations and the ultra-wealthy concerned with profits alone are destroying our republic; it is astonishing that the "health" of wall st is always touted as being tantamount to the health of our nation and people; that is the real fantasy!