How Bad is It, When a Mass Movement Won't Even Take You?

This blog should be a "wrap" on this subject, and contrary to what the headline suggests, it's pretty positive. (I had to use the headline because it's funny.) I am happy report: I'm getting over it! Mostly. I am beginning to realize the joke was on me, and — believe it or not — it’s so rich that even I may LMAO about it.

Why didn’t the Occupy Wall Street organizers just say they “never trust anyone over 30” in the first place?

Now, don’t get me wrong, it was the height of rudeness to suggest this movement is open to “the 99 percent” when it’s not, yet. Somebody should teach those whippersnappers better manners than to start publicly announced meetings an hour late. Maybe those wacky kids could run meetings that respect that their elders only have half their lives left. If you say you’re going to march, then march; don’t set up a mike and ask people to sit around with their signs for two hours. An apology would be nice, if people travel a long way and use up a lot of gas but then are turned away … 

(If you’re not at least chuckling a little at my expense about here, I need to work on my comedy skills.)

A brilliant friend of mine commented on an earlier post: "I wonder if they used flow charts in Tiananmen Square." (Pity the poor fellow who found his name in the rectangle at the end, under the title "Stands In Front Of Tank.")

But in a way, you have really got to admire these American youngins' chutzpah. As of this writing, I no longer think their “bad behavior” spells the end of the movement, because their only job is to start it. It may well develop a life of its own, independently of all this nonsense. And the flow charts will be blowin’ in the wind then, and I’ll be there.

Human Prairie Fire

In a fit of fury and frustration yesterday, I posted a link to the flyer that Johnson City’s Occupy Wall Street group handed out, its guiding principles for building consensus within the movement. Its “guiding principles,” in my not-so-humble professional opinion, on how to destroy itself. Complete with flow chart. Any professional with organizational and real-world experience can look at that plan and think, OH SHIT. Anyone within the corporate realm, opposed to the Occupy Wall Street movement, is cackling evilly, to know of it. (And not because of what Corporate America understands of the corporate world we repudiate, but because of what applied marketing research has taught them about human nature. Quite successfully, in case you haven’t noticed.) I have wondered if Wall Street actually planted that flyer in the hands of a young OWS organizer punch drunk on 15 straight days of sidewalk sleep.

Some academic has probably spent an entire half-lifetime researching the “consensus plan” our local OWS group is using, working away inside a bubble, racking up the numbers that show “this is the best way to get consensus,” out the ass. How sweet. Here’s the problem:  that’s all the plan does. Build “consensus,” while A) the group shrinks down to a handful of the most passionate diehard souls holding mirrors up to each other and nodding their affirmations fiercely, and B) the goal (if anyone ever had one) turns to dust in our hands. I can imagine no better formula for frittering away a moment.

And the message of this potentially defining moment? Messages in a defining moment are not made by consensus, shows of “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Those messages are human prairie fire, raw emotion on the upturned faces of thousands, saying ”Go ahead. Shoot.” If a government is stupid enough to obliterate the first swell, hundreds-of-thousands rush in behind it.

But before we get started, let us see, do we have “consensus” on Raw Emotion #3.4A, Item 6, Line 23b?

Damn it, and this movement has more potential than any I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. (Because I was born in 1964, a flesh-and-bone byproduct of a particular kind of peace and love, who mostly missed the last great movement as a result of being in infancy.) This now grown-up marketing professional recognizes that just about everyone in this country is waking up to the fact they’ve been screwed by Wall Street for their entire lifetimes. Tea-baggers, even, although they’re suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. This movement has a perfect name, “Occupy Wall Street,” a perfect target, and a perfect slogan, “We are the 99.” (I wish I’d had such great ideas 15 years ago, when I was capitalizing on naming campaigns, targeting markets, and coming up with slogans.)

I came home yesterday after a second try at a local Occupy Wall Street event, and threw my signs in the trash. I was livid after getting up early, driving an hour to get there, and waiting the two hours the group was behind schedule. I didn’t speak up about these counter-culture babies’ confidence-killing faux pas when I had opportunities, both this weekend and last, because of what I know of human nature. I was a lone representative from outside the choir of activists; I had no dreads and no beads. I would have been wasting my breath, to say Stop! when these people were enjoying their open mikes so much.

But my wiser husband retrieved our signs from the trash, and propped them against the wall of his shed. The Most Cynical Man On Earth likes what he sees of the New York occupation, and — what? — doesn’t think it’s time to give up on it yet.

Twenty-four hours later, I am sitting back on my heels and wondering, “How can those of us who have something to add get in, and effectively share a little wisdom with these kids?” Or, considering that no small proportion were my age or older, “kids at heart.” (I know, I know — begin by not calling them “kids.”)

The rest of us must find a way, somehow.

Because we, too, are among the 99 percent.


http://zinelibrary.info/files/Consensus%20Achieved.pdf (The flyer.)
http://thinkinginthebathtubagain.blogspot.com/2011/10/bring-it-down.html (Previous blog on Knoxville OWS.)

The Right Winger's Guide to Helping A Popular Movement Destroy Itself

I wasted another four hours trying to participate in another Occupy Wall Street event, this time in Johnson City.

Want to have a good laugh, or a good cry? Click on the link below, a pdf of the flyer and "consensus building" plan the group followed. And don't miss that flow chart on the back!

http://zinelibrary.info/files/Consensus%20Achieved.pdf

When I got home, I threw our signs in the trash.

BRING IT DOWN.

After spending a whole day excitedly making our signs and preparing to camp out with Knoxville Occupy Wall Street Saturday night, Doug and I walked amongst the group’s various organizational committee meetings in Krutch Park for about an hour, and decided to abort. Wordlessly, we read each other’s minds and nodded agreement: this isn’t working out. We were sorry, looking wistfully over our shoulders, as though we’d climbed a mountain to find God and instead found the note, “Sorry for the inconvenience.”*

It wasn’t an altogether wasted day. Before adding the Occupy Wall Street event to our agenda, we had already planned to visit some of Doug’s family at a couple of points along the two hour trip. This fall in East Tennessee (just across the Virginia state line from where we live) is spectacular beyond all reason. I felt the irony of zipping along in my new car in the crisp autumn light, and eating a most awesome lunch at Red Lobster, his father’s treat, before lighting out for Knoxville. (I love crab so much it hurts.) But spending time with Doug’s mother, who has advanced Alzheimer’s, was particularly sad and difficult. (The emotional “color” of the day.) As I told friends once we were back home late yesterday evening, “We were wrung out and in no mood for shenanigans” by the time we got to Krutch Park.

“Shenanigans” is probably not exactly the right word. We saw mostly young “hippies” (for lack of a better term), a few homeless people, a lot of passion, and a lot of immaturity. In trying to “organize,” the organization is falling apart. (See the Occupy Wall Street - Knoxville Facebook page, for details.) Three or four committees had taken up various spots in the small park, in circles comprised of about 20 rainbow-colored, pierced, dyed and dreadlocked kids seemingly getting their first chances to say something. More power to ’em; they’ve got some angst to get out of their systems before, hopefully, they move on to efforts more enduring and effective than this one was.

The real solidarity-killer was the “Constitutional Amendment” committee. As is almost always the case, a very few voices muted all others with their power and passion. One, jacked up on adrenaline, insisted that the Knoxville group’s codified demands include that the United States of America accept the authority of the World Court. Aw jeez, really?

There is nothing inherently wrong with anything I’ve described, except this: We are the 99. We are the 99 percent, getting fucked every which way but loose by the 1 percent. Contrary to the rapist’s cognitive-dissonance credo, we are not “enjoying” it. When a protest or occupation or rebellion includes 99 percent of the population, the reasons people are involved, or the issues that motivate them personally, are infinite. For example, one young, single mother I talked to was A) visibly struggling to make ends meet, B) obviously doing a bang-up job of raising a much-loved daughter, aged 6, presently; and C) really, really worried about public education. It has been stripped of funding to within an inch of its life in favor of military and other “government” profiteers, while commercialized interests seep in like water, to “take up the slack.” This woman had never had the luxury of higher education, and so the thought that, because of her so-called unlucky birth circumstances, her daughter would never even get a shot at college seemed grossly unfair. This young mother can’t afford to buy toilet paper for the school to supplement her daughter’s “public education,” and damn it, she should not have to.

And what about Doug and me, the people who drove a sweet brand-spanking new car to the event and ate at Red Lobster along the way? We are fortunate to a point that I regularly want to fall on my knees in gratitude. I have everything I ever, ever dreamed of in my life, including my first new car and the most spectacular set of stars that shine brighter-than-bright over my rural property in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I stood in the moonlight last night, with my two horses cuddling up against me on each side, 10 acres at their disposal, and I thought, OH GOD. Above all else, I attribute our great fortune to two facts — we were born white, to parents who willingly and generously helped pay to educate us, just as far as we wanted to go; and we carefully and humbly chose what it is that we want, over time. What we want is not “everything.”

We are also on a knife’s edge of losing everything, with one family emergency or serious illness. For years and years and years, we have paid top-dollar for family medical insurance, and paid into Medicare and Medicaid, and paid ridiculously rising medical deductibles besides. In our old age, despite the government medical programs that have collected from us over a lifetime of work, the health care industry will collect our assets in the form of a “spend down.” And after we’re dead, the medical industry will take the rest. Forget about inheritance taxes — nobody is leaving anything to anyone. Don’t be ninnies, Tea Baggers: it’s all getting shunted straight up, to the 1 percent. I'd be okay with it being taken, if it were for the greater good, which would include my children!

Meanwhile, our own college-educated children, the cost of whose educations would make your eyes pop out, are not having any luck finding work except for unpaid or low-pay “internships,” which they are taking, with energy and devotion, so that their resumes are not blank beyond graduation. And all indications are that we parents will be paying for their medical insurance until they are 26 or beyond, plus for their cars, car insurance, and all manner of emergencies that they can’t afford. See, Wall Street knows we’re better bets for paying for these things than our grown children are, by and large; despite all those kids’ great minds and willingness, they’re still fledgling adults, poor in their entry-level positions, struggling to make sound financial decisions, or with paying their debts. They have to learn. Better their parents do it.

And retirement? Now, who’s going to profit if anyone can actually retire? Who's going to pay for all those "less trustworthy" grown kids?

We, for all our good fortune, are the 99 percent.

When a protest or occupation or rebellion includes 99 percent of the population, the reasons people are involved, or the issues that motivate them personally, are infinite. But the cause is exactly the same: the 1 percent. There should only be one goal. Bringing it down.

* Douglas Adams, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy"