In these doldrumy months of winter, the Occupy Movement has a lot of challenges. Cold is the most immediate hurdle, but there’s another one lurking. Foreverness. The Movement is young. But, already I see signs of mere continuance rather than a second act and then a third act in which something beyond the first act of creating awareness happens. The second act is where all the really insane, future-oriented hard work happens. In terms of focus, I haven’t seen that yet. Some of this can be attributed to the decentralized nature of the movement. That’s understandable and desirable, however, it seems to me that it has one glaring quality that, in the short term, is a strength but in the long term is a terrible weakness. The Occupy Movement is a still a ‘youth’ movement.
I don’t want to be misunderstood here. By ‘youth’ movement I don’t mean that it’s predominantly made up of young people. Although, it’s certainly the case that those college students and recent graduates now or soon entering the “marketplace of ideas” we call employment are really hurting in terms of debt and opportunity. There’s also no question that young people do make up the bulk of the movement, but they’re by no means immature. No, by ‘youth’ movement I mean that, in its current undeveloped state, the movement is highly susceptible to fashionable attitudes and peer joining tendencies that do not contribute to the movement’s development one whit in the longer term. I fear that the longer the movement exists in it’s current state, the more likely it is that, in the future, development toward a new model will be perceived as betraying the movement itself. This can be seen in any movement, of course, but I believe that the development of a kind of unreasoned ideological purity would kill Occupy quicker than can be believed.
As things stand, the movement is starting to become mired in evictions, and a lot of the things I hear, see, and read have to do with maintaining encampments and keeping the energy up. This is a direct result of public officials having already figured out how to beat them. Regrouping, reorganizing, and planting the flag anew is extremely important but it also plays into a trap.
Movements get evicted, they reorganize, they regroup, and they re-occupy. Now, how long did that take? How much energy did that take? Then, just as the movement settles in again, authorities come along and make you move again which is to say nothing of the logistical difficulties in finding temporary lodging for the movement in the meantime. This is called wearing down your opponent and, while youth has great energy, cops and public officials are getting paid for this fight. How do you beat this? You have to change the rules by which you’re engaging. While I understand that there are multiple fights happening on multiple fronts they all seem to bear the same hallmarks and share similar playbooks. They are and aspire to be protest movement tactics and that’s what I mean by young. Largely, besides voting and campaign work, protesting is the only thing that young people are truly qualified to do in a representative democracy. They’re good at it and it’s important and it brings change. However, it does not result in the kind of broad changes in the Federal and State legislatures that the movement ultimately wants and that I want. There are limits to what protesting accomplishes if those protests do not essentially transform the protesters themselves.
What I mean by protestors being transformed is that people have got to start running for office and it has to happen soon. I know that’s an extremely broad demand, but that work must become a primary focus not only from both a simple longevity, messaging, standpoint but also from a marketing standpoint. Movement members in their current incarnation can’t be the ones doing it because candidates are the ones that do these sorts of things, and protestors are not candidates. Progressives absolutely shouldn’t count on protests convincing our elected representatives that they should adopt sane, middle class centric policies. The Democratic Party, which the Occupy Movement broadly affiliates with, is just as troubled as the GOP even though it’s not crazy. The leader of the Party is basically a Ronald Reagan with a dash of Clinton thrown in, and the Party itself is very much the same taken as a whole.
We will not be able to get these people to do what we want them to do. It’s against their interests to do so. Besides, there’s no reason they should when the alternative is Santorum banning condoms or Rick Perry nuking Tehran. Voting Democrats, specifically Progressives, are disgusted with the Democratic Party and rightly so. There’s no alternative emerging either within or without the Party that has the sheer people power of Occupy. If the Occupy Movement does not start producing Progressive candidates to run for office then the worst thing for the Occupy Movement will come to be. The movement will merely continue, and continue, and continue. This would be bad for the movement, yes, but it would be terrible for the Middle Class issues it champions. The movement would become noise and it would simply linger, toothless. Its ideas will be seen as trite because it’s supporters won’t be seen as serious.
Now that the Occupy Congress action on January 17 has come and gone, local movements need to get organized for a different kind of action. Go home, pick the local and regional offices you can win or that need to be contested, have a primary via General Assembly approved candidates, and absolutely refrain from choosing protest candidates. This would be the Movement’s second act.
Run to win. Pick candidates with backgrounds that are conducive to winning. No 25-year-old grad students or career civil rights activists without a lot of other kinds of qualifications. No environmental candidates. No feminist candidates. No marriage equality candidates. No offense to any of these groups with which I broadly agree but if you’re going to run then you have to run to govern the majority and protest/special interest candidates are built to lose. This will be the Movement’s third act.
Let’s remember that it is not okay for a group that largely ascribes to a Progressive ideology to engage in only protest as it runs the risk of becoming a lifestyle. The Occupy Movement aspires to real and continuing change, not a flash, however extensive, of good and decent activity. That’s why I say that it is an ideological requirement that Progressive members of the movement seek to govern. Encampments must transition to Representative Democracy. That’s what the American people need and that’s what we have to do.
