It's about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow..
As long as I have been able to distribute leaflets, stuff envelopes, and/or vote , I have been hearing that left movements "right now, ...just needs to grow."
It is nonsense. Or perhaps more accurately, there is no growing.To affect change, it is necessary to get out there and organize, to develop candidates at all levels of government who a) can govern (e.g. fill pot holes) b) adhere to a program, and c) agree with a movement program, and get these people into office.
That is, if you want change, you must take some power into your hands.
Instead of knowledge about the system, there is cherry picking information provided in teach ins -- which do not provide the understanding of basic economics, corporate structure, and finance needed to do solutions.
Instead of understanding the need to discipline and sacrifice and compromise, there is consensus decision making and paralysis.
Instead of actually reaching out, which would mean some compromise, there is utopianism. Can you imagine this movement wanting accountability to stock holders?
So, instead or coordinated action, there are people playing. People with powerful political tools in reach, but are ignorant of how to use them.
Nothing demonstrates this more than the failure to understand the difference between civil disobedience and peaceful protest. While both are useful, and sometimes laudable, one is be definition illegal, the other is protected.
There then come the whiny expectation of institutional powers that they opposed. Consider the petition text I received from moveon:
We demand that you call off the police and that Occupy Seattle be allowed to exercise free speech and voice its opposition to corporate control by demonstrating in Westlake Park, which is in the city center where the targets of these protests—the multi-national corporations and banks—are located. We demand no restrictions on First Amendment rights to assemble, including attempts to seek protection from the weather, any time—day or night.I wonder how that got into peaceably assemble.
In the end, there will only be people wonder why the stars didn't line up to help them change matters in society, as there is a dearth of mirrors in the land.
Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.
