House Majority leader Eric Cantor has taken a step back from his recent comments that the Occupy Wall Street movement represented a mob. However, a recent article on Businessweek.com, Canter is quoted as saying he still greatly opposes the movement, and any attempts to legitimize it, because it supports “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” He also uses this supposed attribute of OWS to provide a contrast with the Tea Party movement, which he says was only interested in taking on government (he doesn’t seem to realize that the government is also made up of Americans, including himself). Even if Cantor was right about the attitude in Liberty Square, we only have to look at the audience reaction in the recent Republican debates to see that the Tea Party is all about pitting Americans against other Americans, particularly if they are people of color, women, homosexuals, the uninsured, or non-Christians. However, after spending a large amount of time amongst protestors in Washington Square and Liberty Square, I feel I can confidently say that Cantor’s evaluation of the protesters is completely wrong.
Everyone in the media has been trying to find a way to sum up what has been going on in New York and now all over the country. They are looking for a particular cause that everyone can get behind, a particular message. Well, I have one word to suggest: inclusion. As much as the corporate media and their puppets in government would have you believe, this is not a movement of radical leftists. Ron Paul supporters are seemingly everywhere, as well as plenty of other groups I would not usually think to find myself in solidarity with are there: Spiritualists (some of them Christian), libertarians, communists, decentralists, the hardcore anti-debt lobby, the list goes on. One of the reasons it has been so hard to plug down a specific message behind these protests is that there isn’t one, at least not one we’re used to hearing
What nobody in the media, from the corporate media to the left wing blogosphere seems to realize is that we cannot judge the success of Occupy Wall Street the way we would any political party. There is no superstructure behind everything trying to get specific candidates elected to public office or specific initiatives carried through at elections (and that is a true distinction between this and the corporately and Christian fundamentalist-controlled Tea Party). The key message behind the Occupy Wall Street protests is that the average citizen needs to be more heavily involved with the governance of his or her nation. That a functioning Democratic state requires an active, educated, and united populous. There is no message more central to the Progressive agenda. And it is a message which protestors believe 99% of Americans can get behind. I think they may just be right.
Cantor’s quotes can be found at:
I will continue to write on the OWS protests, provide video of public events, and participate in my own way. If anyone would like information on a specific topic from me please email me or post a comment. If they would like to find out more about the protests, I urge them to start their search at http://occupywallst.org/ and then just click around news sites.
This is helpful to read and remember. And the thing is, not only can we not judge it like a political party, I don't think we can judge it like most recent political activism, either.
ReplyDeleteI've had a complicated relationship with all the OWS business. Living in Berkeley made me somewhat jaded, but living in Oberlin has made me incredibly jaded and cynical, far moreso than Berkeley ever did. So my first response to OWS was that the lack of message was making the whole thing ridiculous: if I didn't know what they wanted, why should I support yet another failed attempt to revisit 60s radicalism? And all the things I read from participants comparing their actions to what happened in Egypt—a comparison which struck me, at least in presentation, as arrogant and naive—seemed to validate my feelings. For a while there, OWS had the appearance of every other protest of late: a lot of mostly white, privileged, educated 20 and 30 somethings who are yelling instead of doing anything constructive. (And let me just say, as a liberal, that stance gets a lot of flack. It's not that I don't support protest, I just don't support bullshit.)
As things have progressed, I've started to finally see what's happening, and see that for once, this extends beyond the same handful of protestors that I'm used to mostly dismissing. I'm more on board now, despite still feeling that some branches (such as Occupy Oberlin) are just an extension of that same sort of impotent protest that I've come to disregard almost instantly. I think finding the line between acting and just yelling is something that continues to challenge a lot of people, and thus why it's been hard for me to figure out my own stance.
Point being, yes, there is a central mission developing, albeit one far less tangible than anyone documenting it (on either side) wants. Which I think is exactly why I've come round. Because it ISN'T one message, it's an attempt at actual movement, which requires more than one small faction of Americans. Even those of us on the same "side", as it were, have significantly divided ourselves. Stepping away from that is admirable. I honestly did not expect OWS to get past the stage I've been talking about; most things don't. The fact that it has gives me a lot of faith.