An Earnest Politics

The fact that there are thousands of demonstrators currently on the streets of New York (as well as other places around the country) is a piece of good news. But if the existence of Occupy Wall Street is exciting, its content is not. As of yet, it does not contain any actual potential for a true political moment. That is, it does not have any revolutionary content, any real social change within the logic of the movement itself. I don’t mean to say that the protestors don’t have goals and demands—in fact, they have lists and lists of them. But every system of government has a level of resistance which is both expected and thrived upon. Many of those people who defy social norms and resist, in whatever way they have available to them, in even the most authoritarian politics, serve to mark out the limits of acceptability. The outsiders can be punished, made example of, ignored, or mocked, but in each case it is the same—they are naught but a social tool for the perpetuation of the status quo. Every shopping mall has a store to sell studded belts and gauge earrings because teenage rebellion is something expected, something which has no real content to it. Occupy Wall Street currently holds that place in political discourse. 

Our political system as it stands now is one in which wealth garners power; one in which lobbyists determine policy; one in which, as each of the Occupiers is want to tell you, 1% of the people have all of the power. These are no secrets. Corporate influence in elections, especially following the Citizens United ruling, has taken an unprecedented place in typical political maneuvering. These are, in fact, what Occupy Wall Street is in response to. However, the way the movement exists now is in truth only a way of saying “they have power and we don’t like it.” That is much different than protesting an injustice or a wrong. So far, the protests have not approached the justice of our politics. They make claims about justice, certainly. But the way in which Occupy Wall Street has taken place puts it in the realm of teenage rebellion rather than something more meaningful. Even when making a legitimate claim about the crimes of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doing so with a sign that reads “Make Love Not War,” comes off as trite, expected, and without any power. Too much of the focus during Occupy Wall Street has been on signs like this—in being pithy and clever. The result is to make the movement seem adolescent, and allows the powers that be to ignore or mock the protestors. 

All of this doesn’t mean Occupy Wall Street can’t have any meaning, or that it can’t develop any revolutionary potential though. It takes a great deal of bravado to be trite, and even those trite teenage rebellions often lead to much greater things later in life. Occupy Wall Street should be held in the same light—it should be celebrated as a beginning, as a necessary first step before something meaningful can be done. After all, the status quo must be pointed out before it can be changed.  What this means is that the methods of Occupy Wall Street must change. It is these methods which have undermined the content of the movement and made it farcical.

Specifically, it needs more frankness and more resolve. On the first part, that means the protestors need to conduct themselves in a way befitting a serious movement. They need to stop making signs with catchy slogans and ranting rhetoric. They need to stop with kitschy tactics from the 60s. They need to take off the Guy Fawkes masks and realize a true political movement will be something greater. For Occupy Wall Street to have a content it must refocus itself on a political discourse, not on catchphrases as it has been. It is this show at revolution, this lack of seriousness that makes it easy to discard. Further, the movement must become resolute. By suing the NYPD over the recent mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge Occupy Wall Street is turning to the current political system to judge an abuse of power rather than confronting it themselves. If the goal is to alter the political system, one cannot turn to that system for judgement. This is showing implicit deference to very thing the protestors are protesting (after all, the problem is that Wall Street is protected by law to engage in their malevolent deals).

These two failures of frankness and resolve, and indeed all failures of Occupy Wall Street, are demonstrated best in the reaction to various macing incidents. They show that a generally accepted (if not justified) crowd dispersal tactic is being treated as a grave attack on civil liberties. Though the macings are wrong, real change costs more than stinging eyes. Moreover, whenever one of these incidents occur, the protestors have immediately hidden behind camera phones and retreated to blogs to post the videos under titles like “POLICE BRUTALITY ON WALL STREET!” In using these tactics, the protestors are leaving it to the police to decide when it is beneficial for them to change their ways. This still leaves them with the power. And what does the uncaring response from the NYPD show if not their lack of concern? At worst they would have to fire an officer and issue an apology—they are still in complete control. This public shaming tactic only works with grave abuses to humanity, which is why they succeeded in the Arab Spring. But even in Egypt, however, the Army’s power was never threatened and the ruling generals are acting in ways that, to many, seem to border on the undemocratic and as possibly undoing of much of what the revolution accomplished. In any revolutionary movement, the protestors must be willing to fight crime with more than youtube videos. I am not asking for open violence against police officers. I am, however, echoing Albert Camus’ old cry of “neither victim nor executioner” and saying that if a police officer is using illegal and unjustified violence against a protestor, the other protestors should fight back, even if that requires a physical confrontation. In filming and editorializing it, in using the courts to complain about it, the protestors are implicitly refraining from confronting it.

And yet the confrontation of power, in name and in the very methods of a movement, is what makes the true content of any political movement. America needs its May ’68—a movement that was frank and resolute beyond all doubt. Occupy Wall Street contains within it the first step, a nod towards what must be done. But so far it has merely brought the forefront some of the social problems which exist in the status quo. This is not enough. For any change to come, for any revolutionary potential, the movement must be willing to confront the powers which have protected that status quo, to institute the frankness and resolve necessary into the daily make-up of the protests and into the way in which the movement operates. We must make politics earnest.