"I went down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse."
The Rolling Stones.
The Occupy Wall Street Boston people are POLITE. They are so polite, I fear that they might not be able to get anything done. There's a great fear of not including everyone, every demand, that every voice be heard. They are, in a word, process junkies. And that means that they are very, very organized. But the endless processing seems self-involved. Yes, your lovely democratic experiment is lovely--but how far can you really get by the example of a bunch of twenty somethings, plus friends, showing that you can run a camp? The whole thing has the air of a large three day festival, with work groups, and other kind of groups. They want to start by talking about values. Why? They obviously share the same values, and to their white chagrin, culture. When it came time to talk about why they were there, there was an odd silence. Ok, there were 4 firebrands, but I was one of them. Other than that, when they finally managed to stay on the Message agenda item (and before I left) there was a lot of sloshing around; personal pleas, "about what happened yesterday", identity politics, etc. Ending corporate person-hood was the only specific demand in a giant cloud of "we just want things to be better." Please, if you have any knowledge at all about specific ways to address economic inequality, go to Dewey Sq. and talk to these people. The do need to make demands, even if it makes them feel like they're not being nice.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
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1 comments:
As to the Occupy Boston movement being unbelievably nice, I was also surprised. Last Tuesday at the GA a homeless man came up to the stack and said that he would try to talk the local homeless out of using our resources but in response we voted by near unanimously to reject this offer in leu of sharing all of our resources. I cannot even imagine this attitude in any of the other modern (Tea Party) protests.
I agree with your assessment of the GA process and hope that some others will eventually find themselves at the same conclusion. At this point, I support the movement and believe it to be necessary for the advancement of any progressive agenda, but unfortunately we seem to be using process for process's sake.
Unless we quickly find a central set of demands I worry that the movement will gradually wither.
I also have a blog that, if you have time, I think that you would enjoy:
http://sarcasticliberal.blogspot.com/p/america-v-america.html
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