Why Occupy Wall Street Has Left Washington Behind

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/article/164207/why-occupy-wall-street-has-left-washington-behind

Public discussion of the Wall Street protests has focused on the movement’s indictment of the economic elite, but Occupy Wall Street marks an equally profound critique of the country’s political system. As the weeks tick by, the protests at Zuccotti Park and across the nation are driving home this profound realization: this is a fight that can’t be won by voting. The crisis that most fundamentally shapes our lives cannot be solved through the legislative process. This is not because the agenda is unpopular—54 percent of Americans support OWS, with only 23 percent opposed—but because the system is corrupted beyond repair. This slowly dawning realization is both invigorating—an invitation to engage in the kind of bold, blue-sky strategic thinking that leftists have not entertained for decades—and disturbing, a harbinger of just how nasty the future may get.

What makes OWS different from the mass marches against the Iraq War or at the 2004 GOP convention is not just that it’s an ongoing occupation rather than a one-day affair. It’s that this protest is not, at its core, voicing an appeal to lawmakers.

The OWS turn away from the political system began with the choice of location—Wall Street rather than the National Mall. It is driven home, above all, by the refusal to encapsulate the protest in policy demands aimed at Congress. I don’t know whether the absence of specific policy proposals is intentional or accidental. But I do know that it’s part of what lends such power to the occupation and renders its targets so palpably uncomfortable.

The “demand for demands,” The Nation’s Betsy Reed has noted, is misplaced. What would our rallying cry be? “The people demand a .05 percent transaction tax on stock purchases held for less than fifteen days”? Everyone knows what OWS is for. And its essential demand is powerful precisely because of its startling simplicity: “You know what you did. You have our stuff. Give it back.”

[PETRUS]

1. K&R

[Populist_Prole]

2. Another K & R

[rms013]

3. Simple

All we are doing is cutting out the middlemen (politicians).

[Magoo48]

4. It would be good to render Washington irrelevant for a time...a long time.

[swilton]

5. Bullseye!

Someone else realizes that the core issue is systemic dysfunction.

[Doctor_J]

6. But Washington rolls merrily on

and OWS is having no appreciable effect on the corruption, or on the day-to-day workings.

[xchrom]

7. OWS has exactly as resolve as people put into it &

It's just started .

Get involved if you think it might Peter out.