Thomas Frank: Why Occupy failed and how it's more like the Tea Party than anyone wants to admit

[coalition_unwilling]

74. OK, please explain to me what "Mississippi in the fifties" has to do

with anything relevant.

Emmett Till was murdered there in 1954, but no great revolutionary change occurred in MS in the 50s. The lunch counter desegregation campaign was centered in North Carolina, IIRC, and the bus boycott was in neighboring Alabama. First time I can think of where MS hits the national scene in any significant measure is 1964 with the contested seating of the competing slates of Democratic Convention delegates.

Frank introduces the final 3 paragraphs with this question: "But what kind of movement might succeed?" So why is 1848 more relevant than Mississippi in the 1950s?

1848 happened in multiple countries simultaneously; OWS happened in multiple countries simultaneously. 1848 cracked the foundational ideology behind monarchical absolutism; OWS cracked the foundational ideology behind 1% exploitative capitalism. Most important, imho, 1848 and 2011 each trained a cadre of future leaders and thinkers.

Why is the Paris Commune more relevant than the Flint, MI sitdown strikes of 1936 (37?)? Because the Flint sitdown strikes were narrowly focused with limited aims, while the Paris Commune, while it may have failed, was the first foray into modern industrial socialism ever and its transformational aims were larger than simply securing a national labor organization.

Flint is far more relevant to OWS, imo, than Mississippi in the 50s. Frank has clearly not kept completely up to date with Occupy since the 'crackdown,' or he'd know of Occupy Foreclosure where sit-downs (or their current manifestation of 'Occupations') are regularly occurring (albeit not on the scale of the Flint sit-down strike yet).