By turns iconic, inspiring, and frustrating,
OWS has if nothing struck a deep nerve in American public opinion. As with liberalism and progressivism since
the Age of Reagan, Occupy has been largely defined by its conservative opposition. In the popular perception fostered by the
mass media, the Occupiers are, interchangeably, smelly hippie wannabes who need
to grow up and get a job or a bunch of overprivileged, overeducated brats who
don’t know how ordinary people live.
The truth is, as always, more nuanced than
the popular stereotypes admit. A point
of comparison may be helpful. The Tea
Party, OWS’s obverse in so many respects, is thought to have suffered from the
same public misapprehensions. A crucial
difference between the two movements, however, is that the Tea Party was in no
small measure the product of interest group astroturfing. If not for extensive funding by
groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the Koch brothers and the attendant
access to the media resources necessary to persuade and organize rank-and-file voters,
it’s unlikely the Tea Party as a purely grassroots phenomenon would ever have
had enjoyed the successes it did in the 2010 midterm elections.
Although the mass media were somewhat useful in
airing Occupy’s message, OWS never received the same volume of coverage as the
Tea Party. Compounding the problem was a
question of vision, a problem with public image, of means and ends. Apart from asserting the power of the 99% and
protesting corporate power, Occupy never articulated a coherent message. This much was clear both in the Occupy
marches I attended last fall as well as academic discussions about what the
whole thing meant.
The messaging problem was an intractable one
from the start. There appeared as many
facets of Occupy as there were adherents, as many political tendencies as
factions. Meanwhile, fragmented media
images defined Occupy for the rest of the world. Unkempt squatters in New York’s Zuccotti Park. College kids pepper sprayed by police on the UC Davis
quad. But it was the prominence of
anarchists in Occupy Oakland and their refusal to back down in the face of police
intimidation, together with reports of incidental damage to private property during
demonstrations that served to solidify mainstream distaste with the overall
movement. Once OWS and anarchism became
conflated in the public mind, any residual sympathy evaporated.
Much like “communist” and “socialist, “anarchist”
is a term understood viscerally rather than intellectually. Anarchists may not be the mad bombers they
were seen as (and sometimes were) a century ago, but they’re still pretty scary
to folks out in the sterile precincts of suburbia. Rather than seeing anarchists as people
practicing a philosophy of non-exploitive, non-hierarchical social cooperation,
the dominant image is that of black-masked thugs smashing in the plate glass
window of a Starbuck’s. In the absence
of any substantive coverage, it’s sufficient to alienate the people necessary
to make Occupy a broad-based social movement.
One sign of hope from Occupy is that it
signals an emergent struggle for the soul of the middle class. The majority may still be in thrall to the
free market myth, but a small and vocal segment of educated, aware citizens who
see personal economic difficulties as structural rather than as an outcome of character
failure can help shape public opinion in favor of more humane economic and social policies. From that start point, perhaps
the realization that the economic crisis we’re suffering is truly global in
scope will take hold and more of us will find common cause with those afflicted
worldwide.
We are—still—the 99%. All we need to move forward is a common
cause, a common consciousness, a single purpose. Occupy Wall Street may not have gained
momentum as a mass movement in its formative stages. But it can
show us the way forward. Perhaps we will
see in Occupy’s second year a fuller realization of the potential that was so evident in its first, heady days.
© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar
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