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THE Occupy Wall Street protests and their growing support around the nation among average Americans are the inevitable recasting of the populist sentiment that buoyed the Tea Party in its origination but was hijacked by republican politicians in the midterm election season and exploited to fuel dissatisfaction among voters with the pace and scope of change and progress from the Obama administration in its first two years.
The OWS movement, unlike the Tea Party protests, is nakedly and earnestly apolitical, in that there hasn't yet been any overt effort to recruit politicians, court politicians, or to allow politicians to co-opt or carry concerns expressed by participants into any political arena or campaign.
I suspect that form of organization will come at some point, but right now the overall message behind the myriad and seemingly nebulous declarations of intent and purpose from participants is a repudiation of the entire political process and everyone presently engaged professionally in that governmental effort.
While its mostly true that there's no clear agenda or manifesto guiding the majority of protestors (notwithstanding the declaration of intent from organizers), there are clear themes of criticism and complaint which politicians can claim to be oblivious to, but know well who these folks are speaking to and why.
Protestors have gone directly to the doorsteps and workplaces of the benefactors of the majority of these politicians to tell them they didn't intend at all for the bulk of our nation's resources to be handed to them by the politicians we elected to address and remedy our own needs and concerns.
Protestors have gone directly to the doorsteps and workplaces of the wealthy benefactors of the courts whose conservative members dissolved the limits on the money they could give away to politicians who would bend to their will.
Protestors have gone directly to the doorsteps and workplaces of the moneyed benefactors of Congress to make clear they didn't intend for the politicians they voted into power to make the preservation and furtherance of their corporate sponsors' financial enrichment their first and foremost priority when crafting each and every piece of legislation that they considered and passed into law.
Protestors have gone directly to the doorsteps and workplaces of the industry leeches who manipulate public policy to exploit the resources of the defenseless around the globe for their own enrichment - and to protest the shackling of generations of Americans to a corporate agenda of U.S. world domination supported by the perpetual and unending sacrifice of life, limb, and livelihood in a continuous 'war on terror.
Protestors have gone directly to the doorsteps and workplaces of the moneyed benefactors of Congress to stand between them and the politicians that we routinely elevate to that 1% confederation of corporate interests who routinely siphon off the fruits of our labor for their own benefit and purpose. With our votes,cast for hollow promises of representation in the division and disposition of contributions of blood and sacrifice, we get no more than spattered remains of precious meal from a pig's trough.
Through our nation's faith, and in the trust we place in our elected officials that they would be humbled to serve the will of the folks who voted for them and by their good judgement lead, we've been betrayed by a ruling-class oligarchy which has perpetuated it role and influence in our governance; not by the quality of their service to us, but by the advantages of patronage and association.
The Occupy Wall Street protestors now have politicians scrambling to associate themselves with the movement, but few can associate their record in office, or the their actual legislative efforts, with the movement's demand for attention away from their corporate sponsors' concerns. The movement can, however provide support for those who endeavor to shed their corporate fealty and refocus their time in office on making good on the promises given during their campaigns. It's not as if they stood up before they were elected and declared to voters that corporate agendas would outweigh the needs of those who voted to put them in office.
As long as the OWS movement is active and activist, politicians will be loath to roll over the protesting American public to hold their corporate buddies' hands or carry their industry water when enacting legislation. However, that doesn't mean that all we have to do is just keep protesting to keep them at bay.
Baynard Rustin, a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, argued in his book, 'Strategies for Freedom', that for a movement to have a permanent and transforming imprint, it should have a legislative goal attached which will transcend the whims of the emotions of the moment. Describing a different struggle that America faced with the advancement of civil rights, he wrote that:
"Moral fervor can't maintain your movement, nor can the act of participation itself. There must be a genuine commitment to the advancement of the people. To have such a commitment is also to have a militant sense of responsibility, a recognition that actions have consequences which have a very real effect on the individual lives of those one seeks to advance."
"Far too many movements lack both a (legislative) perspective and a sense of responsibility, and they fail because of it," Ruskin wrote. "My quarrel with the "no-win" tendency in the civil rights movement (and the reason I have so designated it) parallels my quarrel with the moderates outside the movement," Rustin wrote in his book, Down the Line. "As the latter lack the vision or will for fundamental change, the former lack a realistic strategy for achieving it. For such a strategy they substitute militancy. But militancy is a matter of posture and volume and not of effect.
So, there will need to be some sort of coordination of the protestors' demands with the actual legislative conduct of the elected in our political institutions.
For now, though, it's enough for the movement to just keep reminding politicians that this is more than some mere extension of their own petty politics. It's a determined and dedicated wall between the job we sent them to do and the selfish ambitions of the corporate few who feather their political nests.
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