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The Ninety-niners

Matthew Yglesias put up an interesting chart a couple of days ago, to illustrate that perhaps "we are the 99%" might be too broad a slogan. And it does bring up a worthwhile point: much of this "we are the 99%" isn't specific enough. It's one reason why I bristle at these discussions of "helping the Middle Class" when so few people seem clear on where "middle", or median, actually is.

It's a simple point, one I've tried to make repeatedly about just what's been so wrong over the past few years when we, ostensibly, have had a Democrat in the White House. This recession, this economic disaster we're living through isn't really a story about the "middle class" - as Matthew points out, the more you get into income brackets above median, the better off people have done economically. While it's true that, yes, say the top 1% has outpaced the top 5% has outpaced the top 10%, etc... the gains really stop when you get to 50, and below. Below 50, there aren't gains. There's stagnation, loss, and such. And even larger point is that the number of people below the median has been growing (which, most likely, means median income is dropping, too), and more people are falling into poverty. The kind of chart Matt shows, which traces long term trends, means we may not even realize how deep the drop has been until well after the fact.

And again, I brought this up earlier: Occupy Wall Street is, most usefully, a protest about poverty. It's about people who've just realized that they've fallen into poverty, and it's about the pain of understanding that getting out of poverty will be long and painful... and may not ever happen for many. And if I find Occupy Wall Street frustrating, yet another way tobe frustrated is that people are protesting poverty... and not advocating for ways of dealing with poverty that we already know are needed and would help.

One way of really making this point, then, would be to be specific. We are not "the 99%". In actuality, We Are The 50% of people below the median. And that's where the problems really lie.

What OWSers Want

The New York Times editorial page hands the Occupy Wall Street crowd a gift today:

As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening....

After citing a litany of statistics, most of which should be familiar to the average lefty, they come up with this:

No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge. [emphases mine]

This notion that there are "plenty of policy goals" should solve that messaging problem the protestors seem to have - hey folks, here's a handy list! I'm actually more fascinated at that "chattering classes"  comment in the first paragraph, since "chattering classes" apparently means "all of our columnists", since you could point to Nick Kristof, Gail Collins, Charles Blow, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, just for starters, as people who've questioned the lack of message and policy goals. I'm also sympathetic to the notion that "airing of grievances is a legitimate... end in itself", though grievances without a solution strike me, still, as an exercise in especially downbeat negativity.

Moreover, in the new Sunday Review section (and PS that section's overhaul is dreadful), the Times offers up what for my money is the best contextual examination yet: Todd Gitlin puts the Occupy Wall Street movement's leaderless approach into the context of lefty history, and its anarchist edge:

Deep anger at grotesque inequities extends far beyond this one encampment; after all, a few handfuls of young activists do not have a monopoly on the fight against plutocracy. Revulsion in the face of a perverse economy is felt by many respectable people: unemployed, not yet unemployed, shakily employed and plain disgusted. A month from now, this movement, still busy being born, could look quite different.

And yet it remains true that the core of the movement, the (mostly young and white, skilled but jobless) people who started the “occupation” three weeks ago, consists of what right-wing critics call anarchists. Indeed, some occupiers take the point as a compliment — because that is precisely the quality that sets them apart from the Tea Party. Anarchism has been the reigning spirit of left-wing protest movements for nearly the past half century, as it is in Zuccotti Park.

Gitlin concludes that the likely route to ultimate influence for the Occupiers lies in adapting and transforming:

By allying itself with the protest, the left at large is telling the president that a campaign slogan that essentially says “We’re better than Eric Cantor” won’t cut it in 2012. “We are the 99 percent” would be more like it. If President Obama takes this direction, the movement’s energy may be able to power a motor of significant reform.

That raises the question, though, of whether the inchoate quality of the Occupy Wall Street movement can continue. Probably not, since an evolving alliance demands concrete goals, strategies and compromises. But perhaps something of the initial free spirit can flourish. There is plenty of public sentiment to nourish it. It doesn’t take public opinion polls to detect American anger at the plutocracy and the impunity with which it lords it over the country.

The culture of anarchy is right about this: The corporate rich — those ostensible “job creators” who somehow haven’t gotten around to creating jobs — rule the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well, having artfully arranged a mutual back-scratching society to enrich themselves. A refusal to compromise with this system, defined by its hierarchies of power and money, would be the current moment of anarchy’s great, lasting contribution.

Gitlin's being wishful there, I think; and not just because Barack Obama will never be what Gitlin hopes. Beyond that...either there are "concrete goals, strategies and compromises..." or there aren't. And part of those compromises will naturally have to involve the existing power structure, that problematic "plutocracy" Gitlin names, that others call "Versailles" and "banksters" and all the rest. And I think both the Times lead editorial and the arrival of Big Labor at the protest marches are shots across the bow to the anarchists: either find some goals and a sense of purpose... or the lefty establishment will do it for you.

One thing Gitlin does also suggest is that it's an illusion to call this movement "leaderless"; that core of anarchists, are, in fact, a de facto control group for what can and cannot happen within Occupy Wall Street. Gitlin points out that the historical antecedents of OWS - like the SDS, Black Panthers and radical faminist movements - had core groups to guide them, even whie claiming no leaders and no vertical hierarchy. And my own sense is that these movements struggle precisely because what appears so fluid and diverse, actually isn't. It's a small group of similar, like-minded people who ultimately chart these movements courses... and that's a recipe for actually limiting constructive discourse and stifling dissent. After a certain point, people with alternative ideas get the message that it's either go along or go someplace else. Occupy Wall Street works, right now, at being such a broad based movement because much of the details are still in flux; aside from raging against the corporate machine and the vague notions of "Wall Street", there's not a lot of focus. But there will be. And ultimately, someone or something will take charge, in some form or fashion. And those left out will, most likely, fall away.

Of all the lefty movements, I must admit, it's anarchists with whom I sympathize least. Anarchy, chaos... these are not answers. They are disorder in a world that yearns for order, which to me is no answer at all. The quality of "tear it all down" - which some find as a selling point, just now - is where I part company; partly because it can't all be torn down, and partly because... I'm actually not in favor of it, if it could.

I feel sort of vindicated by the fact that so many are coming round to conclusions I suggested right off: that there's a lack of concrete purpose to OWS, and that such a lack is a void that ultimately needs to be filled. I'd also point out that much of what the Times editorializes as solutions... were the point of the short list I put in my initial post. But I think Gitlin sums up, more coherently, what troubles me, still about OWS and its anarchic heart: the idea that this is a "leaderless" and "free form" movement is itself somewhat illusory. What this movement is, really, is still coming into focus. And until it does... I'm leery of just signing on. Or, the alternative is that Occupy Wall Street never really does come together around a concrete goal. Which is either failure or chaos. Both strike me as problematic.

The Big Guy Bows Out

This shouldn't take long: isn't it obvious that Chris Christie's been rejecting a run for President in 2012 because he thinks it will be easier to win in 2016? Am I the only one who's noticed this?

I'm sure I'm not, and if there's something I would go down to lower Manhattan and hold up a sign about, it's that our political life is just so painful and obvious these days that it hurts. Republicans can't, and it seems pretty clear won't, pull it together to defeat Obama next year. But everyone, and at this point we sure do seem to be everyone, is unhappy with the Obama Presidency. I think some press types - both desperate for a story, and convinced that the guy no one likes can't possibly win a popularity contest - are about the only ones flogging the idea that this Presidential race is any sense a contest. Republicans will nominate someone, this time who's worse than John McCain. Think about it. How bad does that have to be?

I know it's kind of fashionable, in this moment, to throw up one's hands, dismiss the whole political process and cynically deride all politicians... but I don't think we have that luxury. There will be an election next year for the President and much of Congress. The reality of our choice next year is that we will (still) be choosing between a Democrat and a Republican, whether you hate "legacy parties" or not. Which means, the choice is probably Barack Obama or a Republican. And with those options... I don't know about you, but "not Mitt Romney" seems like a good place to start the decision tree. Clearly a lot of Republicans still grapple with that "not Mitt Romney" thing.... or we'd have let Chris Christie off the hook a while ago.

At the same time, I think people who sell Christie short probably need to face facts. Christie, along with a few others, is carving out a way to be a tough Republican at the local level in a way that some voters find appealing. I don't like or agree with things he's done, but I think one has to be honest: had Christie decided, even at what seemed like this "late date", he'd have been a formidable opponent. I'm not sure Republicans would even have appreciated his bluntness and his refusal to be doctrinaire just the way they want, but he's plain-spoken and critical of Obama in ways that do kind of sum up Obama's failings. 

Still, Christie would, and will, have an easier time making that case in 2016, against some poor Democrat who's not Obama and who would have an even harder time defending this Administration's messes. It will be even easier for Christie if Obama wins in 2012 and fails for 4 more years. And apparently, that's where he thinks the wind is blowing. And I don't think he's dumb.

The Waiting Game

The waiting is the hardest part.

For days, weeks, depending on where one puts the start of it, the Occupy Wall Street supporters have complained about being ignored. As it turns out, "critical mass" is not something a movement can define for itself; and the past few days have moved the various Occupy protests - I know, hundreds! - to center stage. The question becomes... now what?

Waiting for an answer to that - whether these protests gel into something more coherent and concrete, dissolve and wash away, or possibly get out of hand in some form or fashion - is the hard part. America is an impatient culture, full of impatient people (which is why, on the edges, I worry most about the "get out of hand" aspect), and nothing is quite so impatient as a social movement full of energetic people lacking a sense of where to go.

Of course, one reason Occupy Wall Street is attracting more coverage is because, just now, there's so little to cover. It's talk about OWS... or offer deep thought on Herman Cain's rise in the Republican polls. Or live coverage of Amanda Knox. Or live coverage of the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor. Can you sense the excitment? 

As we have been for much of this year, there's this pervasive sense - I'm not making this part up - that we're stuck. every few weeks, between what seem like awfully long recesses, Congress blows into DC, they all stand around and point fingers about who's failing to address the economic crisis, and then they do vey little. Before OWS, there was a lot of anxiousness around the "debt deal" and the "Super Committee." Now, I think, a lot of people are realizing what some us figured out when the Super Committee was announced: that plan to kick the can further down the road (so many cans, so much kicking... such a long road) was pretty much a plan to deliver failure. And right on cue... it seems clear the Super Committee will never reach any kind of a deal.

And if that seems like a problem... you may not want to know about Congress' failure to pass spending bills for next year.

This endless breath-holding, standing on the precipice, I think, is really making us turn blue; we're running out of breath to hold, time to wait, patience to wait any longer. That, as I've said, seems like a lot of what's caught on about Occupy Wall Street as a pop culture event, in New York and all those other places - nothing to do? feeling bored and impatient? Come down to the urban core and hold up a sign! There's food! and frisbees!

None of this is to dismiss the underlying seriousness of these protests - and BTW, I happen to favor food, frisbees and sign holding - but like many (and we are many)... I wonder what we're waiting for, what we're waiting to have happen here. We can't go on playing the Waiting Game forever, despite the way many in Congress seem determined to never address spiraling debt, revenue and spending problems, but I think a lot of people sense that after waiting... might come the abyss.

And if that's our option, I think a lot of people would choose to wait a while longer... thank you very much. Trouble is, aside from the bad parts about us holding our breath til we turn blue, we are running out of time to do nothing... but wait.

 

 

Hard Times

My instinctive sense for how bad the economy is has been telling me, for some time, that things are getting worse. I don't really have numbers to back it up - there I go again, asserting things without facts - it's just a hunch, a feeling, a sense of the winds blowing and the times changing. I was saying this, just yesterday, to my friend Jennifer, about how I thought the economy could get much worse, and she said "oh God, don't even say it." Because, really, we both kind of sense it to be true.

These are hard times. And it's not surprising, I suppose, that the hardness of these times is driving a fresh wedge into our society, our politics, our personal connections. The things that bind people together - friendships, social connections, shared experiences - are falling away. If you're not facing enormous personal hardship, if you're not sure that the weekly paycheck will even pay to feed you, if you have even the smallest of luxuries to fall back on... how can we expect others to understand the things we're going through?

Reading through even a few of the postings of the "We Are the 99%" Tumblr, I think it's impossible not to be moved. The group blogging experience has yielded up, I suspect, it's ultimate moment: a true sense of just how much pain and suffering is out there, how little we can do to fix it, and how hard it will be to get out of this. Emotionally, it's incredibly wrenching. Politically, I think it's a problem we may never figure out, entirely, how to solve.

It's hard to accept hardship we cannot fix or change. I have a friend at work whose mother recently suffered terrible injuries in a fall, and a few days later her father suffered a series of strokes. It's hardship that I think must be almost unbearable. I can't fix it, I can't take away her pain... all I can do is try and be supportive, and sympathetic. And what I can do feels, naturally, like very little. There's a more distant, objectifying piece I could write about the struggles we are having to see rehab as part of healthcare, when rehab and longer term care are two of the biggest issues in health reform; there's a comment to be made on how my friend, with a coffee shop salary and modest health insurance, can hope to cover what will likely be enormous bills... and on some level, all of that is entirely beside the point.

These are hard times. All of us, really, are bound to be tested, pushed to our limits. Anger and frustration will separate us, make strangers of friends, enemies where shared goals once stood. Not everyone will understand what others see, or share an emotional connection, a sense of passion and purpose for the same goals. These are difficult, upsetting times. And on some level, I'd love to share the anger, the frustration, the sense of upset. It's just not who I am. It's just not how I see. It's just not what I feel.

As hard as these times are, I feel compelled to do what I've always done: love the people I care about most, hope the best for them, do what I can as best I know how, and try my best to take care of myself, so I can be there for others. I'm not angry, or frustrated, or sad, even by the passions that have played out across my life and this blog in the past week. I can't hang onto the negatives, and I can't let anger and fear and the rest rule me. I get it. These are hard times. And they will take people on journeys to new experiences, different places. They will separate and divide us from the familiar and allow us to find something else we may have been meant to be. 

Godspeed, my friends. May we all survive these hardest of times.

So long and thanks for letting me share the FEFs!

 

For a variety of reasons, Friday Evening Floralude (and it's other F's) no longer will appear here at NYCweboy.  Thanks, weboy for indulging me with the platform these past few years.

jinb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sad Mac

My first exposure to an Apple Computer was the 2E that they got for my high school's math department. I was a junior, and I'd had a computer at home for probably like two years, a Radio Shack TRS-80 with 4K memory. Yes, 4K. 8K was very expensive. The 2E at school had, as I recall 16. Maybe 32.

In college, our computer center was an early adopter of Apples, putting Macintoshes (I called them Macintie at the time) into all three of its computer centers, and selling them through the school store. I didn't get one; the cost of school was high enough before a several thousand dollar toy. I used those computers to write pretty much all my term papers, and more abitiously, used them to tabulate the votes of hundreds of students to select the films for the Student Film Society.

These days, I'd put the whole vote process online.

I wouldn't write about the passing of Steve Jobs except that, more than most any public figure, he probably most literally changed the life I'd known, and yours, too. Apple changed how we thought about computing, what computers could do, how we advertise computers, and how "computer geek" came to take over and define so much of our pop culture.

I think he may be the business leader I'd most admired in my lifetime. The idea of "Silicon Valley", of a magical, mythical place where really smart, creative people got to work in sleek employment utopias... Apple was the first (Google, now, has probably eclipsed that). I was fascinated, when I finally went to Sn Francisco and Oakland to visit my sister (she was doing grad work at Berkeley), to see Palo Alto up close. They make Apples there!

Outside of a brief foray into a Wintel tower, my computers have been Apples. My preference is for Apple. I have worked on two MacBooks for the life of this blog. I have carried my music on two iPods. I used to love the Creative Departments of the ad agencies where I worked, because that was the Apple playground. And it just reinforced how cool it was to be "a creative."

To me, that's the heart of Apple, the legacy of Steve Jobs - not the technology, but the faith that technology, put to good use, can help us, inspire us, make us more creative, better. These latter years, when Jobs became a better CEO, putting himself out there for his company's dynamic product presentations... the passion and the joy he exuded, doing what he loved to do... was hard not to find inspiring.

At my table, as I write this, loving my aging Mac Book, I have to acknowledge that much of what is good in my life, right now, is because of Steve Jobs. I don't think I can say that about another public figure, not in the same way, not sending out from the laptop he helped create... for me. That strikes me as awesome... and sad. So very sad. May he rest in peace.

The Personal Financial Crisis Is Political... Sort Of

I don't put a lot of myself in this blog.

I like to write, I like to share my opinions... but I don't like a lot of personal detail. Who I am, What I do, Where I live, the bagel I ate this morning... not really what I want to write about. I like being online as anonymously as possible. Part of the reason I chose this route is tied up in everything I learned about how to write: no personal pronouns, every experience but my own... I will likely make a lousy memoirist.

So as much I like to share my opinions, I don't like them to be driven by personal animus. I write about politics, and my opinions on the issues of the day... but I try not to get too personal about it. The issues I write about may touch me personally (it's less than you might think), but to write about them, for me, is to figure out what makes them about more than me. The things I've written have led to a lot of interesting conversations, a lot of assumptions about my politics, my beliefs, what drives my thinking. Some of it's accurate, and some of it isn't. I don't much worry about it; I certainly don't take a lot of the responses personally. I am not what I write, and on most things, I tend to keep my own, separate, counsel.

Try this - I'm the kind of Democrat who, faced with a choice not liberal enough for me, goes with "Mr. Rent Is Too Damn High." Go figure. And try to square that with friends who think I'm probably subscribing to National Review.

One thing I have not written about - and no, I don't plan to start now - is how this economic and financial crisis we have at the national level has affected me and my family. I suppose it's easy enough to infer - I work in a coffee shop, after all - but daily documentation of my various financial challenges isn't my scene. The story of this financial crisis - what it's wrought, how bad it's gotten - is, to me, a story larger than any one of us.

That said, I think there's been a real failure by the media to really give the depths of people's financial woes much in the way of documentation and shape. Lots of people are out of work, lots of people face foreclosure, mounting bills, loans coming due... yet these stories reach us through an enormous filter. Part of it, of course, is about a general media failure when it comes to reporting on poverty issues. But part of it, I think, is generally about what many people would rather not know - if it's that bad, if people are suffering that terribly... well, that would be awful, and awfully painful to bear. Yet it's embarrassing, one of the real shames of our nation, and not a new one: how do we go on, when so much suffering happens around us?

There are times when the lack of coverage of poverty and poverty issues makes me furious. Right now, I'm not so much furious about it as dismayed. Not having a lot of good documentation of poverty issues, at a time when poverty is exploding, makes writing about it hard. And beyond that, I suspect a lot of people have been falling into poverty with no real compass about how to live through it. Part of what good poverty reporting would do would be to provide light for people just discovering its realities as they join its ranks.

In some sense, I think, I've discounted part of what's likely very cathartic about Occupy Wall Street - the sense that these protests give the people participating a chance to share an experience. A chance to shout out, yes, it's that bad. There's real suffering out here. Why can't people see it?

And, in part, the reason I discount these protests is that the claims of "raising awareness" are the ones that really strike me as old. This is not a new crisis we are living through. Mortgage foreclosures bloomed into a major problem almost 4 years ago. The crises in banking and markets that followed as the mortgages collapsed are also a story several years old. The sense that "we don't know how this was allowed to happen" are long gone - there's nearly a wall full of books to explain just how much was known, just how little was done, and just how bad things remain.

But I think this year, for a number of reasons, has put some reality around the abstract sense that these hard times are not temporary. And though many of us - certainly me, people I know, people who've immersed themselves in the details of the financial crisis - knew this would last; others, I think, are just figuring some of this out. And realizing, slowly, that these hard times will not be contained to some group of "other." This crisis has touched so many of us... and more, I think, before all is said and done.

When I wrote my previous post on Occupy Wall Street, I was concerned most about the lack of a sense of defined purpose; I remain frustrated, especially, by the seeming all-over-the-place aspects of what Occupy Wall Street is meant to accomplish, the lack of a clearly explained, well defined set of goals to result. As I said, I don't think it's wildly unreasonable, or unrealistic, to suggest that protest needs a purpose. And I think, still, it's terrible to cast the "financial crisis" as a confusing black box - when the problems are definable, explicable, and actual ways to address the excesses exist.

But my own visceral reaction - of how this protest fits into my own personal experiences of life in the meltdown - does remind me that the personal is political, and perhaps the lens of how this protest is being viewed is skewed for some. The real touchstone of this protest, I'm starting to suspect, is the discovery that others are sharing a similar experience, that, yes, is being cast a shared sense of anger... but beyond that, I think, is something more basic: these are hard times... and people are having a hard time.

The problem, I think, with making Occupy Wall Street a moment to connect over shared difficulties is multifaceted. For one thing, I think the overall message is downbeat. There's a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that I think many don't have the luxury to indulge in, or share. Another aspect is that, as I've said, the protests offer no real sense of solutions, either to individual challenges (practical issues about bill paying, putting food on a table, and such), or our national problems that linger (foreclosure, bank regulation, our broken poltical processes).

But the aspect that perhaps exasperates me - as I pondered this all this afternoon - is this sense of people protesting poverty problems as if they were somehow new, and new because, well, now people whose lives were previously comfortable have realized the challenges when those comforts erode. I understand well the sense of newfound fear, the sense of regret, the anger, the profound confusion of a life that's sailing into uncharted waters. But as my life circumstances have changed, and I've met more people whose lives never had some of the privileges mine did (and in a number of significant aspects, still does), part of what I've learned is... I didn't invent living in hard times. I'm just a late arrival.

The personal is, yes, political. My politics have always been defined by my experiences, the things I've known, the the things that have happened. Hard times have, no doubt, altered those politics. I'm less patient with debating abstractions. I'm less interested in batting about ideas just for the sake of batting them around. My demands and expectations are about action, doing, making. Do something. Take action. Make change.

As I said in that discussion thread... I hope I turn out to be wrong, that Occupy Wall Street somehow shows itself as a potent force, a change making event, something that moves us forward in these very hard times. I don't think that's what will happen, and in part - from a distance, outside of my own experience - the reason I doubt this protest is because so much of what drives it is so personal, so deeply felt. I'm not trying to figure out financial reform because it will help me personally, because I feel sad or angry about my personal hard times. I'll be okay, thanks, at least for now. What I need, what I have to demand... is that there's help for many. Practical help for basic survival, and national help to break the hold of corporate financial interests.

We all need help, and giving in to fear, frustration, and yes, sadness, won't solve much. And I say that, most of all, from personal experience.

Ms. Warren's Profession

I have been wondering "why all the fuss" about Elizabeth Warren since she burst onto the national political scene. Of course, I am always leery of the flavor of the moment (no, really... ask Baskin Robbins), but I'm a liberal too and Warren is, I admit, standing up for some strong liberal principles... so why am I always, at best, lukewarm about her?

After spending time in the Obama Administration, first doing work "overseeing" TARP, then working to develop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren is now back in Massachusetts, running in the Democratic primary to face Scott Brown next fall. Warren may well win the primary on name recognition and national celebrity, though whether she can defeat Brown strikes me as an open question, particularly since her broadest appeal is to voters who probably didn't vote for Brown in the first place, and they're not a majority.

Lefty love for Elizabeth Warren is a force, I suspect, because there's so little, right now, to grab onto if one favors progressive change; she is benefitting, enormously, from the disillusionment of many Obama True Believers desperately searching for someone new to hang upon all their hopes and dreams. What I can't escape, though, is the sense that Warren is more of the same froth that produced Obama in the first place: a lot of faith in the Ivy League elite, a fetish for the educated, professional elite. Whether Warren might, ultimately, do some good as a Senator is an open question, but in order to to sort that out, we'd be better served, I think, looking harder at what she's already done.

It's Not The Occupation Of Wall Street, It's The Time Spent Occupying

"Occupy Wall Street?" Seriously?

I've honestly been struck near speechless by the daffiness of the "Occupy Wall Street" protest. I can only imagine how inane it looks on Facebook; on Twitter, I get minute by minute tweet updates, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing at all.

But hey... don't blame Twitter.

There's a reason to be worried about "Occupy Wall Street", though the idea that it will have any kind of impact on government policy, financial regulation or banking reform is beyond absurd. If there's a reason to worry - and G-d knows, I hope at least police officials are worried - it's the question everyone should be asking about the occupiers... why are so many people so able to spend pretty much all day every day hanging out in a park in lower Manhattan?

Our political life in this country is in such a brain dead state that yes, it's easy to misconstrue Occupying Wall Street as doing something brave, bold, and confrontational. In fact, it's mostly tae, unfocused, and incoherent. If you don't like the way things are going in this country, if you hate what rich bankers are doing to the financial system... hey, let's stand around for a while!

Mellissa McEwan wrote Friday:

I really don't understand the concern trolling from other progressives about how Occupy Wall Street needs to have a "cohesive message" or a "set of demands" or a "list of proposed solutions" or wevthefuck. There's a lot to be said for a good, old-fashioned awareness-raising event, and, with 90% (ninety percent!) of USians saying the economy stinks, this protest ain't happening in a void of evident motivation. Making some goddamn noise is as good a place to start as any, and better than most options we've got anymore.

...which is, for my money, about as good a sum-up of lefty uselessness as we've got, just now. Occupy Wall Street doesn't "raise awareness" - plenty of people are goddamn well aware that the economy stinks, that financial companies are profiting on people's misery, and serious reforms are needed. "Making noise" is an ineffective approach to activism, and activists - surely someone as knowledgeable, focused and capable of self expression as Melissa - should know well enough that anger requires action, and action requires a sense of purpose. Occupy Wall Street lacks all of this.

Here's a shortlist of ideas you could propose, just off the top of my head:

1. We could centralize lefty anger around an alternative candidate for President
2. We could agitate for the return of Glass-Steagall
3. We could hold Democrats in the House and Senate accountable for their failure to promote an ambitious reform agenda, and replace a generation of aging leaders who have become to tied to the inner workings of Dc and party politics, and lost their connections to the real concerns of real people.
4. We could have significant tax reform, ending the Bush tax cuts across the board, and closing the major loophole that allows Hedge Funds managers to book their salaries as profits on investing, for starters
5. We could back "too big to fail" legislation that would require the breakup of large, poorly performing entities like Citigroup and Bank of America, returning banking to a more locally based enterprise.

I resent the suggestion that just because one is on the left and finds a pointless exercise like Occupy Wall Street to be absurdly off point, that one somehow does not care passionately about financial reform. We need reform desperately. And its a disservice to the issues we have and the reforms we desperately need to throw up a black box around the seriousness of these issues and say, hey, it's fine if you just run around and scream aimlessly. No, it's not.

Still, the point of concern is that all these people milling about is, in its way, significant. The ability of Occupy Wall Street to generate a crowd of people, milling about, angry and bored, is the start of a recipe for a kind of social unrest that could be terribly destructive on societal order. That's obviously fine by a lot of proto-anarchists who think that "tear it all down" is a starting point for our discussions of how to make change; but I've said before, and I'll say again, Americans are deeply insulated from the unrest much of the rest of the world is experiencing, and the potential for violent uprisings and conflict is a kind of arson to our social fabric that more people should take more seriously in all its negative prospects. The potential for Occupy Wall Street to get out of hand, for things to heat up and spill over is very real; and that, really is the underlying problem of inequality, unemployment, and economic hardship that's become the reality in so much of America today. It's why thinking, well spoken activists really ought to be ashamed of not doing more to fight for serious solutions, and seriously holding people we trust more to account. The "Occupation of Wall Street" will, most likely, fizzle, if we're lucky; but if it does, that's really only a temporary reprieve... and I don't think anyone's got a good answer, still, about how to affect the kind of change that would give the Occupiers something to do instead, long term.