Occupy's tactics are hurting their message and the left

[MFrohike]

42. Maybe, maybe not

First, if you're going to offer polls to prove your claims, it would help if they were recent. I realize that one month is recent in real life, but not so much in modern politics.

Second, this movement is NOT the child of the New Left or their methods. This is a throwback to an earlier age. Some of the ideas pioneered in the 60s have been used, such as performance art style mockery, but I think the roots of this movement run far deeper than imagined. Given that, older methods, such as literally occupying a space, have been resurrected. Times change. It's a fact of life.

Third, and this one is the key, the perception of the movement is not controlled by the movement. It's controlled by the times. You think a protest like this would have sprung up nationwide (hell, worldwide if you regard it as an offshoot of the various protests of the last decade or so) five years ago? Not no, but hell no. The basic instability of the global economic system has reopened the old economic debate. This is a good thing. It's not solely a good thing because we can address inequality, but because we can point to places like Europe and the US which are attempting slow-motion suicide through austerity. It's time to shoot the sacred cows of neoclassical orthodoxy (the figurative cows which are their arguments and worldview, not actual cows or people) and move toward a viable and sustainable economic system (my preference is mid-century managed capitalism). The success of the movement will be due in small part to its actions and in greater part to the conditions surrounding it.