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Wall Street is occupied, if you haven’t heard. And it may be a point of frustration for the occupiers that no one has been taking them seriously – not even the media. Hell, it took close to two weeks for even Michael Moore to decide it was worth checking out, and that was only after some unions threw in their support.
I confess, I was ambivalent about it myself, if only because on the surface, OWS didn’t look all that different from any other left-leaning protest I’ve seen in the last decade – the same wide spectrum of perennial liberal grievances, with little in the way of actual demands apart from “Eat the rich” (which isn’t a demand so much as an 80s hair metal song) and “stop being evil”.
But the fact that it’s been going on for close to three weeks now, and is popping up in other cities around the country, has caught my attention, as has the fact that all this is happening within the context of a crap economy, the country deep in debt, unemployment and foreclosures on the rise, moves by state govts to disenfranchise unions, etc.
Which is why I think the OWS should be taken more seriously than it is.
( And O how I do go on about that ... )
For all that, the Big Question is: will OWS actually accomplish anything?
Personally, I doubt it. The OWS may be great symbolism for the disenfranchised, but the Wall Street bigwigs and the wealthy in general don’t give a rat’s ass about symbolism simply because they don't have to. They have no incentive to reform a system that works in their favor, and – as long as enough of that money is funneled into the right campaign donations and lobbyist slush funds – neither does the US govt. The only way that will change is if the OWS people can come up with a way to show both the 1% and the govt that they have more to gain financially by reforming the system than by keeping it as it is.
Until that happens – or until the turnout numbers start hitting the tens-of-millions mark for at least a month – all the OWS people can really expect in terms of results is exactly what they’re getting: Wall Street playas standing on the balconies drinking champagne and laughing at the hippies.
Desperate but not serious,
This is dF
I confess, I was ambivalent about it myself, if only because on the surface, OWS didn’t look all that different from any other left-leaning protest I’ve seen in the last decade – the same wide spectrum of perennial liberal grievances, with little in the way of actual demands apart from “Eat the rich” (which isn’t a demand so much as an 80s hair metal song) and “stop being evil”.
But the fact that it’s been going on for close to three weeks now, and is popping up in other cities around the country, has caught my attention, as has the fact that all this is happening within the context of a crap economy, the country deep in debt, unemployment and foreclosures on the rise, moves by state govts to disenfranchise unions, etc.
Which is why I think the OWS should be taken more seriously than it is.
( And O how I do go on about that ... )
For all that, the Big Question is: will OWS actually accomplish anything?
Personally, I doubt it. The OWS may be great symbolism for the disenfranchised, but the Wall Street bigwigs and the wealthy in general don’t give a rat’s ass about symbolism simply because they don't have to. They have no incentive to reform a system that works in their favor, and – as long as enough of that money is funneled into the right campaign donations and lobbyist slush funds – neither does the US govt. The only way that will change is if the OWS people can come up with a way to show both the 1% and the govt that they have more to gain financially by reforming the system than by keeping it as it is.
Until that happens – or until the turnout numbers start hitting the tens-of-millions mark for at least a month – all the OWS people can really expect in terms of results is exactly what they’re getting: Wall Street playas standing on the balconies drinking champagne and laughing at the hippies.
Desperate but not serious,
This is dF
