"Stop - hey, what's that sound?"
By Will Collette
It seems that everyone is trying to figure out what to make of Occupy Wall Street. Now that the news media have discovered it, they are falling all over themselves trying to figure out how to label it.
Is it a left-wing Tea Party? Is it akin to “Arab Spring?” Is it a throw-back to the ‘60s? Is it something else?
I don’t care what you call it. For my part, I call it very welcome and long overdue.
In May, I eulogized Gil Scott-Heron, a long-time favorite singer who recently died. One of his great songs (actually a poem with a music background) may have foretold this new Occupy movement. That song was “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” And until this past week, it hasn’t been.
Only in the past week, has the news media “discovered” that something is going on that was, for most, totally unexpected. A new social movement NOT spawned by Fox News, not corporate sponsored, not slick, not totally scripted and not predictable.
Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman wrote “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.” (If you’re of Boomer age, you may be wondering where you heard Krugman’s opening lines – they're from “For What It’s Worth” by the Buffalo Springfield).
It may be hard for TV crews to get the leaderless Occupy collective to give it sound-bite sized demands, but the clear focus on Wall Street’s role in our international economy miasma is central to the Occupy movement.
My favorite Rhode Island political commentator Tom Sgouros went to New York
Tom described some of the media jabs at the Occupy movement, such as their refusal to publish a bullet-point list of demands, and had this to say:
“I've read articles about how diffuse and uncertain are the goals of the protest. That's silly and nothing more than the usual way the press disparages leftist protest in this country. Are the Tea Party protests united? I've been to some of those and talked to anti-abortion protesters right next to people who believe the Fed is part of a global conspiracy to debase the dollar. In that respect, there's nothing different here. I never saw a drum circle at a Tea Party protest, but I saw no tri-corner hats in New York
“The people in Zuccoti Park are -- like me -- upset over the power of corporations and big finance over life in modern America
“I've also heard it said that it's a problem because there are no specific demands, another absurd complaint. When was the last protest you heard about called off because its demands were met? No protest succeeds in that fashion. In reality, protesters take to the streets when success of that kind seems impossible. Many of the people who urge the protestors to be more specific in their demands are simply hoping to use that as evidence the protest has failed when the reality of winter weather sets in before their goals are achieved.
“…. During my visit I saw no signs and heard no chants demanding handouts. What I saw are people who recognize that the deck is stacked against them. Necessary credit can't be found, education requires going into deep debt for many, companies that were once the pride of our nation are hollowed out and shipped away, and "financial innovation" enriches the few at the expense of everyone else along with all the rest. The list is long. Our economy currently suffers not from a lack of handouts, but from actual financial oppression, causing the slow demise of the hopes and dreams of hundreds of millions of people. Our nation is still a great one, but we will only decline until we can find a way to provide a chance at a good life not only for the 1% who sit at the top of the economic pinnacle, but for the 99% that is the rest of us.”
If you want to hear some of the Occupy folks talking about what they are doing, without outside commentary, here is a very nicely done video at http://vimeo.com/30081785
I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know if Occupy Wall Street