I have been casually following what is going on with the Occupy Wall Street protests via Reddit—hipster punk girl posts a picture of herself getting arrested, yay! And I hear tales of shirtless hippies with drums and overworked police officers from my eye witness into Manhattan, the lovely Katherine. And I do see that is it doing some good. The way the movement is spreading, the protest has so much volume that people cannot help but listen, finally drawing attention to some of the more important issues worth making noise about.
But I cannot figure out who is in charge over there. More importantly, I cannot figure out the main point of these protests—probably because there isn't one?
I get it: times are difficult, policies that favor the wealthiest 1% of the population and ignore the rest are unfair, change is needed. Obama told us that "Yes we can!" except we don't even have jobs. It sucks, and the "We are the 99%" slogan is a great way to draw attention to that. So I agree that protesting is necessary, don´t get me wrong. I´m just not sure that this is the best we can do.
Imagine that you are the boss of a small company, and one of your better employees comes to you one day to complain.
Employee: Boss, I am getting frustrated.
Boss: Really? What's wrong?
Employee: I go home every day with a headache and I am not sure that I enjoy my job anymore.
Boss: Wow, sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?
Employee: …
Boss: Anything?
Employee: …
Boss: Well, I am sorry to hear that you are frustrated. Now please let me get back to work, I am a busy man.
As the boss in this situation, your employee does not really give you anything to work with—he came to complain, but not with a solid complaint. You know he has a headache, you know he is frustrated, but since he hasn't given you anything concrete that you can do to help, and you are too busy to continue questioning him, you will likely do… nothing. His headache can suck it up.
Now, the government shouldn't need explicit directions from its people on how the country should be run—that's their job. But what if they aren't following through with what we elected them to do? Then I believe it is the people's responsibility to speak up. Protest our little hearts out.
But like the aforementioned boss, our elected officials are busy people. They are not going to risk having objects and insults thrown at their faces to go ask the protesters, "Excuse me, I see you want some change, but what change, exactly, are you looking for me to make?" Just complaining isn't enough, you need to make a complaint.
An essential part of a successful protest is a clear, specific goal. Of course, any protest is going to attract the crazies—but so long as there is an inescapably clear complaint being promoted, the anarchists and the hippies playing drums in the background won't seem as absurd, and may actually be helpful. The noise they make will put more force behind the point, rather than dominating the entire protest. America has seen enough loosely conglomerated protestors on the part of the Tea Party, and my fear is that the OWS movement could be labeled as the equivalent, albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum.
A great Op-ed piece in the NYTimes recently commented: "A better critique of the protests is the absence of specific policy demands. It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn't make too much of the lack of specifics. It's clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it's really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details." (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss).
I respectfully disagree. Americans are smart people, and while noise is helpful, I believe that offering a smart solution would put the Occupy Wall Street (and Chicago and New Orleans and everywhere else) protestors miles ahead of their nemeses in the Tea Party. For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is currently being blocked by Republicans—push for that to be resolved. The repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act effectively removed the separation between investment banking and commercial banking, which is what allowed commercial banks to "gamble" with peoples mortgages in the first place—push for that to be reinstated. I see these issues showing up more and more, which is a step in the right direction, but more focus would be helpful.
So OWS, I am a little disappointed in you so far, and hope you continue to really zero in on the actual solutions that you are demanding. You are certainly drawing attention to some important issues, and I give you credit for your volume, but I don't believe that pointing at the problem is enough—you need to ask for something concrete, some kind of solution. Otherwise all you are doing is asking the media to parade the crazy side of Liberal all over the headlines and annoying the crap out of anyone living in Lower Manhattan.
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