Reply #74: You are likely right, Tansy - but I think there is potential - even without infrastructure

[bread_and_roses]

You are likely right, Tansy - but I think there is potential - even without an internal political infrastructure. In fact, maybe because of the lack thereof. I keep quoting the same article, and so won't here, but we have had major organizations with very defined agendas, organized structure, and tight message discipline - the Labor movement being one - agitating, organizing, marching - think last Oct in DC - with clear goals, white papers full of policy, articulate spokespeople, even celebrities - and what has it gotten us? Precisely nothing. The rest of the professional progressive sphere should have gotten a clue after what happened to Labor's Employee Free Choice Act (a very modest, non-radical bit of reform). Instead, they've been too afraid of losing their "seat at the table" - even Labor, to their eternal shame and increased marginalization.

I like what Granny D said - that sometimes all you can do is put your body on the line.

I tend to think the lack of structure, the leaderlessness, is a good thing. After all, our last, best, greatest effort to work through a leader - well, we all know how that's gone. Nor have our sane, explicit, exhaustively researched policy proposals, presented by well-respected, internally structured organizations with great political experience and savvy gone anywhere. Nor even the clear, plain voices of the majority, as represented at least by polling.

We - the "99%" (I think the figure too generous, since at least the next 4% batten off our blood as it dribbles from the jowls of the uber-wealthy) get nothing, fail, are rendered impotent and irrelevant, no matter how many times we present and march for our rights and interests.

I am all for OWS. I think they are doing it the only way we have left - and making that visible. I hope their ranks swell.

Though "hope" is too strong a word. I'm afraid I wore out hope. I have no hope. But if anything will change, I don't think it will be through the usual paths we all - or most of us - have trod these last thirty years or so. We've reached a dead-end on that path. Time to try something else.