Do the OccupyWallStreet folks really have to formulate a bullet-pointed position paper that like position papers generally would be ignored?

This photo accompanies Matt Stoller's interesting post "OccupyWallStreet Is a Church of Dissent, Not a Protest"

by Ken

My concern about the OccupyWallStreet confrontation in Lower Manhattan's Financial District has been mostly the unqualified outrageousness, disproportionality, and illegality of the official response, presumably representing government's collusion with or capituation to (choose one) the financial-industry oligarchy. As I wrote the other night:

We can talk more some other time about the nature and justice of the action and its tactical workability. But for now they're irrelevant. The government isn't entitled to an opinion of any of that. Those people's right to protest is as close to absolute as anything that exists in U.S. law.

I confess that I haven't been keeping close tabs on OccupyWallStreet, and until the other night I had no idea what or where John Zuccotti Park (oops, I see that's the old name, before it became Liberty Plaza Park -- I thought it was the other way 'round; I certainly remember John Zuccotti from his years in city government as the consummate inside technocrat, though I've lost track of him as he's become a nabob in the world of those quasi-public development and oversight corporations that have increasingly usurped the functions of government) was. That's the designated haven for the protesters, and I discovered on checking the Google map that it's just a few blocks from my office.

That night after work I undertook the heroic project of walking whole blocks out of my way just to see what-and-where. Actually, it wasn't that far out of my way, or hardly at all if I just continued the couple of blocks up Broadway to the Fulton Street station of the A train. So now I know where the whatever-it's-called park -- really more of a plaza than a park -- is. And I felt for the protesters.

A representative expression of the view that the protesters have no business protesting unless they can enunciate a clear point-by-point program was a recent column, "Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim," by the NYT's new "Big City" metro columnist Ginia Bellafante, which generated much hysterical reaction from OWS sympathizers. I recall one piece denouncing the piece as reading more like an op-ed piece than a news report, the writer being apparently unaware that it wasn't a news report but a column. (This demonstrates alarmingly poor newspaper-reading skills, but then, maybe it also reflects on the amount of actual news reporting the NYT has done on the subject.)

Bellafante has apparently just switched over from service as a NYT TV critic (I qualify this only because recent-ish TV reviews have appeared, but perhaps those were her last efforts wearing that hat), and from a quick glance at some of her screeds she was a cosmically, screechingly horrible critic. But we can't necessarily hold that against her. After all, when Frank Rich made the switch to op-ed, he was a grindingly horrible drama critic. And in Bellafante's inaugural "Big City" column, on September 16, "Steps Away but Worlds Apart in New York," she not only staked out some interesting editorial turf --

If this column has an agenda, it is, in part, to actively record the incongruities and hypocrisies that so easily attach to life in this city — to document, substantiate and contextualize them, to observe the lives and mechanisms of New York from their various and discordant vantage points.

but interestingly spotlighted geographic flashpoints in the city, like the intersection of Park Avenue and 96th Street in Manhattan, where a visitor can witness the extremes of our economic-class gaps.

NYT caption, accompanying the September 16 Ginia Bellafante "Big City" column: "Class collisions in downtown Brooklyn, top row and bottom right. In Manhattan, bottom left, expensive condos sit beside public housing."

Nevertheless, I'm not terribly sympathetic to the notion that it's the responsiblity of the protesters to come up with a position paper like the bilge that think tanks produce, or political consultants manufacture for their candidates, usually with no intention whatever of giving any of it a second thought if they can buy their way into office. As I wrote Tuesday:

If your vantage point is, say, Bloombergian Billionaire, where mere millionaires are regarded as low achievers and people who scrape by on mere six-figure incomes are regarded as working stiffs, the notion that ordinary Americans have the right to gather just to voice anger and pain, to demand that the now-settled policy of ignoring them be reopened, can be seen as a mortal threat. Okay, a pathetically anemic mortal threat, but when you're a lonely billionaire, you're very likely no stranger to paranoia.

For a more reasoned look at the stakes for the protesters, I can recommend a post by Matt Stoller on Yves Smith's "Naked Capitalism" blog, which begins (links onsite):

OccupyWallStreet Is a Church of Dissent, Not a Protest

Last weekend, I spent a few days with the protesters downtown near Wall Street, and it was an eye-opening experience. The people there want something, but it’s not a list of demands, and it is entirely overlooked by the media and most commentators on the protest.

If all you read are news stories and twitter feeds about #OccupyWallStreet, the most trenchant imagery that will stick in your mind is that of police brutality, and the politics of Wall Street greed. The debate seems to be organized around whether the protest will be “successful” or not, how the protesters are stupid or a new American Tahrir Square, or rhetoric designed in a media sphere that maximizes attention. Glenn Greenwald suitably demolishes the sneering commentariat. But I think there’s something to add about what exactly this protest is, what it is doing, and most of all, what the people there “want”. They don’t have a formal list of demands.

And it’s obvious that this isn’t just about Wall Street, nor is it really a battle of any sort. There are political signs there attacking Fox News, expressing anger about Troy Davis, supporting the Iranian revolution, urging the Federal Reserve be reigned in, and demanding rich people pay their taxes. There are personal signs about debt, war, and medical problems. And people are dressed in costume, carrying lightsabers, and some guys are driving around a truck with a “Top Secret Wikileaks” sign on the side. I asked if they were affiliated with the site, and one of them responded with “That’s what the Secret Service asked”. Most of all, people there are having fun. . . .

Finally, as is often the case, Ian Welsh has an especially interesting take on his blog:

The reason many liberal and progressive elites . . .

2011 SEPTEMBER 29
by Ian Welsh

. . . hate the occupy wall street folks is simple: they have bypassed the old left leadership. The old left is not making any money off this, is not leading it, so they hate it because it challenges them.

The old left exists to bring in money and keep paying themselves. This is as true of union leadership as it is of the majority of environmental organizations. The leadership of almost all of these organizations is deeply corrupt. All they care about is whether they can fundraise off of something. If they can’t, they despise it. They will, and do, regularly sell out of the interests of their own supposed constituents, in order to make their personal lives easier, to get richer, and to keep hobnobbing with important people.

Movements which bypass the old left, like Occupy Wall Street or Wikileaks, or Anonymous, are MORE of a threat to the old left leadership than the right wing, the Tea Party or the Republicans. Those forces are all good for the old left, they use fear of them to drive donations, and to convince their followers to vote Democratic, for which they are then rewarded with access, pats on the back and small amounts of money. A genuine left wing alternative to the old left leadership is an existential threat to them, and thus they attack them.

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