The "audacity" and "hope" that inspired lots of Americans to participate in the Obama campaign in 2008 seems to have re-emerged with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many observers view this new phenomenon as the progressive counterpart to the Tea Party. There are some important similarities and some significant differences. There are also some lessons -- pro and con -- that the Occupiers can learn from the Tea Party.
Here are some key points of comparison:
Setting the Agenda: Both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street changed the national conversation. The Tea Party emerged soon after Obama took office and immediately went on a relentless attack against everything Obama stood for and tried to achieve politically. They also attacked him personally, challenging his religion and birthplace. Obama's election, and the 2008 Congressional elections, had been seen as reflecting a shift in the nation's mood and in public opinion toward more liberal and progressive ideas about public policy, including what polls showed was overwhelming support for some kind of universal health insurance plan. But before the Obama was able to get much traction on its political agenda, the Tea Party had put the Democrats on the defensive, emboldened the Republicans, and gained widespread media attention. The Tea Party seized on the nation's economic hard times to demonize Obama and his liberal agenda. The Tea Party's disruptive protests at Congressional town meetings during the summer of 2009 provided the mainstream media with dramatic stories featuring confrontation.
The media immediately covered the Tea Party as a serious movement with serious ideas. As a result, the Tea Party helped shift the debate on many issues. For example, on health care reform, it injected bogus ideas (like the lie that Obama's plan included "death panels") that their political allies, like Sarah Palin and Sen. Charles Grassley, repeated and helped legitimate. Obama, the Democrats, and their allies had to spend inordinate time and political capital refuting those lies rather than advancing their own proposals. This strengthened the hand of the insurance and drug companies and their allies among the Republicans and moderate Dems like Sen. Max Baucus.
This strengthened the hand of the insurance and drug companies and their allies among the Republicans and moderate Dems like Sen. Max Baucus.
Obama has certainly been weakened by these attacks. A new study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that President Obama "has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment" from the media of all presidential candidates since May. Pew found that Obama was the subject of negative assessments nearly four times as often as he was the subject of positive assessments.
In contrast, Occupy Wall Street was initially ignored by the mainstream media. Then it was ridiculed by the media, which focused on the "spectacle" of the protest rather than the issues. But in the past two weeks, that has changed. Although the media continues to focus on the spectacle, it is also now taking seriously Occupy Wall Street's concerns about widening inequality and corporate influence. More stories, columns, and editorials are now addressing this issues. In Washington and in cities around the country, many politicians (almost all of them Democrats) are jumping on the bandwagon, or at least voicing support for Occupy Wall Street's grievances.
A Time magazine survey, conducted October 9-10, found that among respondents familiar with Occupy Wall Street, 68% say the rich should pay more taxes and 79% agree that the gap between America's rich and poor had grown too large. (It would have been more appropriate if the question asked about the gap between the rich and "everyone else," since the Occupy movement has focused on the nation's richest 1%. A recent study found that Americans significantly underestimate the nation's concentration of wealth, but, even so, think that wealth should be distributed more evenly.
The growing crescendo of concern about these issues was so powerful that even Congressman Eric Cantor, the right-wing House majority leader, who last week called Occupy Wall Street a "mob," felt he had to address these issues. He scheduled a speech, on the topic of inequality, for today at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school, but cancelled it after he learned that he couldn't control who would be in the audience and that Occupy Philadelphia would be protesting outside. That's too bad, because it would have been fascinating to hear Cantor try to justify the widening economic divide.
Targets and Solutions: To the Tea Party, the major enemy is government is general and, in particular, taxes, regulations on business, and safety-net programs for the poor. On the other hand, their picket signs warn, hypocritically, "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" (and Social Security, too). To Occupy Wall Street, the major problem is the concentration of wealth and income by the super-rich, big business's disproportionate influence on government, and the failure of Congress (mostly Republicans but some Democrats, too) to rein in Wall Street's destruction of the economy, leading to massive unemployment and foreclosures.
For the Tea Party, the solutions are lower taxes and less government (except those programs that Tea Partiers want to preserve). The solutions to the problems identified by Occupy Wall Street are more progressive taxation, public financing of elections (to eliminate the system of legal bribery we call campaign finance), government pump-priming to create jobs and stimulate demand, and stronger regulations on business to protect consumers, workers and the environment.
Media and Money: The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are both highly decentralized. They both communicate to their participants and allies via Facebook and blogs, so that local groups feel part of a larger movement. But the Tea Party has several advantages. It has several megaphones for its message, including an entire cable channel (Fox News), the vast majority of talk radio shows (including Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck), and the Wall Street Journal. These huge media outlets are a wing of the movement, serve as cheerleaders for the Tea Party, and provide a consistent message that helps give the movement some ideological coherence. The Tea Party also gets lots of financial backing from right-wing millionaires like the Koch brothers and others, funneled through corporate-backed advocacy groups led by Karl Rove and former Cong. Dick Armey. Occupy Wall Street has neither advantage in terms of media or money.
Outside/Inside Strategy: Finally, since it emerged in the summer of 2009, the Tea Party's influence has been its effective use of an "outside/inside" strategy. Although it claims to be a movement of outsiders, surveys have revealed that most Tea Party activists had previously been involved with Republican Party politics. The Tea Party has helped move the GOP to the right by mobilizing voters in Republican primaries and in general elections, as revealed in the November 2010 elections. It is the Tea Party's threats to oust Republican elected officials and challenge GOP candidates who stray from the Tea Party's right-wing views that have given it such political influence. Even though the Tea Party represents a small proportion of American voters, and even of Republican voters, it has gone a good job of mobilizing its base in Republican primaries.
It is too early to know if Occupy Wall Street activists will try to emulate the Tea Party's "outside-inside" strategy. Many Occupiers voice skepticism bordering on hostility for electoral politics. Most are disappointed with, and feel let down by, President Obama, which has fueled such sentiments. Many bristle at suggestions from some quarters that Occupy Wall Street should have a more specific set of demands or support specific pieces of legislation, like Obama's jobs plan, or proposals for a tax surcharge on millionaires, and communicate to their own members of Congress. Whether Occupy Wall Street activists, and its millions of sympathizers around the country, will translate its movement activism into volunteers and voters -- for example, to help Elizabeth Warren win a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, or even help Obama get re-elected -- is unknown.
Occupy Wall Street has clearly captured the nation's imagination. The Time magazine survey found that 54 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the Occupy protests, while just 23 percent have a negative impression. By contrast, just 27 percent have favorable views of the Tea Party. Two-thirds (65 percent) of Americans believe that the Tea Party's impact on U.S. politics has been negative or negligible.
Occupy Wall Street is now dealing with a dilemma that has faced many movements: how to link visionary calls for radical change with specific demands for immediate reform? They also reflect the difference between what organizers call "mobilizing" and "movement building." The first involves large protests that may generate media attention but don't necessarily build the organizations needed to follow up, train leaders and negotiate with policy-makers. The second involves the slow, difficult work of building unions, community organizations and other groups that can dig in for the long haul and keep people engaged when the excitement dies down.
In many cities, the Occupiers and the Organizers are now discussing ways that the two wings of this economic justice movement can work together. These conversations are still in the early stages, but there have already been some positive results. Last week in Los Angeles, for example, several busloads of Occupy LA activists joined a demonstration sponsored by Unite Here Local 11 outside the ritzy Hotel Belair to protest the hotel's union-busting practices.
Also in Los Angeles, many Occupiers lent support to Rose Gudiel, a member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), who was fighting a foreclosure and eviction by Fannie Mae and OneWest Bank. There's no doubt that the political climate created by Occupy LA and the national movement pressured these two financial giants to modify Gudiel's mortgage so she and her family could remain in their home. The battle transformed the 35-year old Gudiel from a victim into an activist who has pledged to help others win similar victories.
Occupy Wall Street is voicing the frustrations of tens of millions of Americans who are unlikely to show up at protest marches, but who could be mobilized to show up as volunteers and voters in upcoming elections if the Occupiers, unions, community groups, MoveOn, and other progressive groups can find a way to join forces and link the radical vision with a reform agenda.
Rabbi Yonah Bookstein: Don't Be Afraid of People in Tents -- Learn From Them
Sen. Art Eggleton: The Meaning Behind the Occupy Movement
David Frum: Why I Am Still a Republican
Its like comparing Grasshoppers to Ants.
http://jennyhatch.com/2011/10/20/occupy-wall-street-as-compared-to-the-tea-party-written-by-a-tea-party-organizer/
Jenny Hatch
Find out about the professional level of organization. This did not come about organically. I is a worldwide movement. Its not about JUST America. http://takethesquare.net/about-us/
Wrong!
The Tea party started out as a non-partisan protest against the bailouts of the banks by the Bush administration. It was later co-opted by the right wing of the Republican party. Hopefully the OWS protest can avoid a similar fate.
You only have to listen to blathering, belly-aching two-faced conservative talk radio for 30 seconds to realize the blame is aimed squarely at the present administration and NO ONE ELSE.
It will weaken, fracture and destroy OWS if it abandons its senior status as judges of policy by attempting to develop and support policy. By demanding results only, they force elected officials, not OWS, to take responsibility for policy, to own it, and succeed or fail accordingly.
Educate yourself.
OWS stands for world government.
See Robin Hood Tax, 1% to fund UN bank.
Educate yourself.
May I use your posts as a case in point?
Saying that the OWS movement stands for a world government is an amazing statment, don't worry. I won't use your real name if I qoute you.
2. This financial disaster which started in late 2008 and is still going on ---- who has done the perp walk for this? NOBODY! NOBODY! As a matter of fact, not only has nobody done the perp walk but these foxes guarding the henhouse got bailed out with our money and even preserved their big money bonuses in the process.Who should do the perp walk ? People who rated absolute garbage debt as AAA,profiting while doing so. Corporate execs who stand up at a meeting and tell the public their company is healthy when they know that it is a house of cards.I lost alot of money in my 401k because of these irresponible clowns. The fact that nobody has gone to jail for this fiasco just makes your average working person feel that the game is rigged.
3. I've got kids whose future I'm very concerned about. Can you imagine how it must feel to come out of college with 100k- 200k of loan debt and the job prospects are almost none ? These kids have been sold down the river before they even get started.
The politicians on both sides of the aisle and the corporate exec who's attitude is "let em eat cake" need to know that there is a very large segment of the population that has had it with all of them and is just about reaching a boiling point.
The big push came when the housing bubble did a slow burst starting in late 2005. The deregulation of the banking industry that started when Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994 and really picked up steam with the election of Bush Jr and the "get government out of the way of business" people were in full control till 2008, created a perfect storm.
The Bush tax cuts and the two futile wars he started tossed $5 trillion onto the National Debt by 2008 and continue to add almost a trillion a year.
I feel this movement crosses normal economic and political boundries. I am sympathetic to elements of the tea party message and I also can sympathize with some of what the Wall St protestors are complaining about.
Here are 3 issues that are bugging me.
1.I'm a union member who works for Verizon.Verizon is a healthy,profitable company.They make billions in profit every quarter.They paid no federal income taxes the past 2 years and somehow even got a tax refund.They also took 1.5 billion $ in bailout money from you and me even though the CEO stated that they did not need any bailout money. So, how do they repay this country and their workers ? By trying to take away my pension, my healthcare plan and most importantly by moving as many American jobs as they can overseas! How does this help America's economic recovery ? Who are the politicians that allow this? Oh ,and the CEO makes the same amount of money as 300 average employees but I'm not supposed to mention this little fact because if I do then I'm engaging in class warfare. This corporation has no allegiance to this country,only to the stock price. The media won't say anything for fear of losing ad revenue. There has got to be a middle ground between corporate profits and maintaining a viable middle class in this country.
Mmm, no, OWC-ers are targeting Wall Street while the Tea Partiers — along with the majority of Americans (64% to 30%; Gallup) — are targeting the government, as in the politicians who actually hold the power, duh. Tea Partiers also aren't interested in the civil disobedience that OWS-ers support to the tune of 98%, much less the violence that 31% of OWS-ers support. Tea Partiers also aren't interested in joining forces with hypocrites who don't hold their own pols accountable.
See Robin Hood Tax.
Educate yourself.
This is my comment as a video I made.
For starters, "the Tea Party" isn't a party. Secondly, the Tea Partiers aren't the only ones who recognize that the government — the politicians, who hold the power — is to blame: "Americans are more than twice as likely to blame the federal government in Washington (64%) for the economic problems facing the United States as they are the financial institutions on Wall Street (30%)...." (Gallup, 10/19/11).
OWS-ers are aiming at the wrong target. You're like the gang who couldn't shoot straight. You're sitting down on Wall Street, amid your own garbage, whining about lobbyists who have every constitutional right to address their client's PUBLIC SERVANTS. And on top of it all, you're pretending the represent 99% of Americans when only 30% even agree with your targeting Wall Street vs. the government, and only 22% even agree with your goal (Gallup).
The problem is the career pols — like Wall Street favorites Schumer and Barney Frank, whom you've hypocritically reelected — not to mention the man of change, himself, who was busily selling your public option out to the insurance lobbyist seven weeks into his presidency: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PwqSCJmbxk
Unless and until you're willing to start holding your OWN POLS accountable, don't expect to have any credibility. Where are the demands that the man of change — who's accrued more 2012 campaign funds from Wall Street than all the Republican candidates combined — return those campaign dollars? Where the demand that he fire his Wall Street chief of staff and G.E. adviser? The silence is deafening.
The source you got that the president raised more funds on Wall Street than all the repub candidates combined has been found to be lying.
Rarely, does the recant make the same rounds as the original lie.
The truth is, and can be ascertained on any nonpartisan or even bipartisan site is that Mitt Romney alone raised 5 TIMES the funds from Wall Street as did the president.
The original source, a conservative site, has since admitted that it lumped all the DNC contributions for ALL Democrat candidates into one sum and attributed it to the president's campaign. It was done deliberately to mislead (ie lie)
What do you say to that?
*silence is deafening*
*crickets*
Found by whom? And where are the demands that he return his campaign funds?
Obama’s key advantage over the GOP field is the ability to collect bigger checks because he raises money for both his own campaign committee and for the Democratic National Committee, which will aid in his reelection effort...." http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-has-more-cash-from-financial-sector-than-gop-hopefuls-combined-data-show/2011/10/18/gIQAX4rAyL_story.html
HE'S the guy doing the campaigning on Wall Street, not only for himself but the DNC, as well. HE'S the guy making the appearances and doing the schmoozing. Get it? So where are the demands that he return his Wall Street campaign funds? And, for that matter, where are the demands that the DNC return the Wall Street funds? Unless and until you hold your OWN pols accountable, you boil down to nothing more than a movement of hypocrites.