Tuesday, November 15, 2011

A more portable occupy wall street?

Occupy Wall Street seems to have adapted the tactic of the 30s Hoovervilles, and to have evoked a response from the governing class in the U.S. that is identical, almost to the letter, to that of Hoover to the veterans in D.C. But there is another tactic that the protestors in Hoover’s time did not possess: that “real time” link that comes with the web. Watching the police beat up Berkeley students and professors in the videos (such as here) means that the lies of the media can almost immediately be found out by the interested cybernaut.
The question is, how much does the interested cybernaut count?

I have been reflecting, from this apartment in Paris, about the difficult winter that lies ahead for these American troops, these soldiers of the 99 percent. My suggestion is that the Occupy movement become temporarily portable. That is, it will switch between on-site occupations and media occupations. I don’t really believe that the movement will die because the establishment press, having failed at mockery, is now trying to tabloid the movement to death, with fake concerns about violence and drug use. The tabloiding will, however, cause the support for OWS to fall in the polls. It is at this point that ever new tactics have to be used to fight back. To my mind, the teach in and ‘hearings’ may be the best method. The OWS can and should issue ‘subpoenas’ to, say, those who received golden parachutes from Bank of America and those who were just laid off with the usual kurtness to investigate unemployment in America, and how it works. Would the golden parachuters come?Of course not. But it would be easy to represent them – any grad economics student could fill in their place. By such devises, the ows people can really take the debate out of the hands of the establishment media.

The occupation movement, so far, has been brilliant at bringing imagination back to the political process. Un autre effort, messieurs et madams, si vous voulez etre libre!

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