10,000 Pounds

# Occupy

I can’t say I’m either supportive or dismissize of the OWS movement that has seemed to envelop this nation in the last two months. I can wholeheartedly agree with them about some of their concerns of the lending institutions of America – there shouldn’t be companies that both play an integral part in our prosperity, are too big to fail, and can gamble billions of dollars of American money in order to make billions more. It should be like the old engineering adage “Pick Two”, and really, truly, honestly, it should be “Pick One”. No one would be upset if these banks gambled big with their own money and lost it all. No one would be upset if they gambled big and won too, but I guess that’s besides the point. At some point the house always wins.

But what’s troubling, despite it being a major draw of many to the #occupy movement, is the largely unstructured hierarchy of the movement. It’s wat’s allowed the groups in various American cities to grow their encampments. But it may also be their eventual downfall. The movement is characterizing itself as non-partisan, anti-“Fat Cat” bureaucracy, which is really what a talk about the mation’s financial troubles should be – free from party bias, and more importantly, out of the reach of special interest groups. But these same groups have already begun to employ the movement to further their political gains – the right, of the “liberal agenda”, the left of the nation’s disapproval of the right.

Matt Taibbi [urges][taibbi] the protestors to protect themselves from these affronts to the non-partisan nature of the protests. But protection can’t come merely from denial of these labels; nature abhors a vacuum, and as unwholly natural as politcal journalism sometimes feels, they too follow the nature laws and just feel flat-out uncomfortable abouth a story with no buzzwords. What this movement truly needs is a face; a single voice that speaks for the entire campaign. It isn’t necessarily what that voice is saying this early on in the movement; merely that it is saying something, and saying it well.

In much the same way that Dr. King became the face of the Civil Rights movement, and largely shaped the debates at all levels of American life, so too do the OWS members need their own public spokesperson. Without it, #occupy will ultimately serve as nothing more than a tool to manipulate public opinion wrought by the very same people the protestors are unabashedly opposed.