Now that Occupy Wall Street has been going a while (into its second month), there’s a pick-up in “What you don’t know about OWS” posts/articles.
I know about Occupy Wall Street. I’ve been there. I actually count some of the protesters as friends. A couple days ago, I brashly told people that I was an expert on OWS and when they laughed, I told them I meant it.
Here’s why OWS is a waste of time:
1) They’re self-defeating
I spoke at length to an anarchist at Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza. Smart, interesting, funny guy with a cohesive worldview. He didn’t have much in common with a lot of the other protesters, as he sees Occupy Wall Street as an illegal occupation of a public park. He is also willing to fight the authorities as (he sees) appropriate and violate laws. How many of the other protesters are into this? Not very many. Case in point: An earlier day, while yelling “No justice, no peace, fuck the police!” he was physically grabbed by another protester who demanded that he stop doing that, that he was inciting the cops to go after them. The anarchist was stunned that a movement that theoretically comes from an idea of freedom had people in it who were trying to undermine his.
All-inclusivity causes such problems.
As a gesture of goodwill to the people in the neighborhood, Occupy Wall Street decided to place limits on drumming, making it only 2 hours a day. Guess who wasn’t happy about this? The drummers. OWS had taken a majority’s decision to impose something on a minority.
2) OWS doesn’t have a plan (or even a coherent ideology)
Sure, people are mad, but complaining isn’t enough. Being upset at the elite is easy; having ground-level solutions is not. I saw a woman bringing voter registration forms to OWS. It was heartening, until I saw people looking at her like she was an alien.
It’s impossible for them to have a unified message, because there are communists and anarchists and average sorts of American liberals all co-existing. One person will preach the coming violent overthrow of the government while another is a staunch peace activist. There’s no bridging that divide.
They tout themselves as a leaderless movement. How many leaderless, scattered movements have coalesced into greatness?
3) People are fickle
It’s October now. The weather has been nice. I’ve been wearing shorts, at points. Who wants to sleep in a park in the dead of winter?
They’ve started shutting down the Occupy Other Places locales. How much will that continue? How long can you keep going out to support a message that rests on this:
Even if the on-the-ground protesters really stick to it and ramp things up, that might actually be counter-productive. Going out and getting arrested really won’t help the movement. In fact, any sort of real pushing of boundaries, as could happen with the communist and anarchists, will result in a pretty swift dampening of the movement, both by law enforcement and public opinion.
OWS has received a lot of press and support in the past couple works. Financially, they’re doing fine, with over half a million dollars, recently. From where? Not from 99% of Americans. Let’s say it was one dollar given per person (which in all likelihood, it wasn’t). That’s 500,000 people who saw fit to financially support OWS. Is that a movement that has a promise of longevity?
The main site of OWS is in a little bubble, but going down to Occupy Times Square allowed me to be around tourists and locals and see a broader cross-section of opinion. You know what the reaction was from normal, apolitical Americans? It’s silly.
That’s not a movement that’ll change the world. Nor can it. Just being on the streets does nothing. Even if you’re sleeping there. Even if you have funny signs.
In the meantime, enjoy the show, because in a few weeks, we’ll be moving on to the next story.
Recent Comments