By now, many Americans have been made aware of the Occupy Wall Street (or whatever) protests sweeping across the nation. Starting in New York, spreading to Washington, D.C., and out west all the way to Portland, the demonstrations have targeted the financial system holding the nation hostage.
The protesters have been called many things. They have been hailed as the champions of Main Street by Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders,@@http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-08/politics/30257499_1_wall-street-eric-cantor-tarp@@ while those on the right have labeled them as troublemakers, anarchists and a mob. The Tea Party and other conservative voices have fed the fire by lashing out against the movement.
“I, for one, am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.). “And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.”@@http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/07/338843/cantor-smears-99-percent-movement-a-mob/@@
This kind of speech is typical of Tea Party-sympathetic GOP representatives and of those on the presidential campaign trail who have maintained a no-compromise position with the White House for the last three years. It’s deeply seated in irony. And then there’s Glenn Beck, who said on his radio show, “It will be the Night of Long Knives. It will be a purging of this country.”@@http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/glenn-beck-occupy-wall-street-kill-everybody_n_1004016.html@@ Yes, that is a reference to Nazi Germany, and yes, he is a crazy person.
The really crazy thing is that protests got almost no mass media coverage for the first two weeks they were going on. Thousands of people turned out to protest the Masters of the Universe, crowding Wall Street and camping out in Lower Manhattan, and nobody picked up the story. @@http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/brian-topp/occupy-protests-herald-a-party-thats-almost-over/article2197112/@@At first, I thought this reeked of a media blackout, but as coverage picked up, I decided networks were simply waiting to pick sides.@@well that, and the fact that the movement had no mouthpiece and no tangible, discernible goals… but that is Matt Walks digressing…@@
There were of course many dribbles and murmurs in the media of some movement gaining traction, but most of the major news networks didn’t move on the story until last week. Keith Olbermann was the first to comment on the protests on his show on Current TV, devoting nearly an entire episode to Occupy Wall Street while many other major networks were running the news of Steve Jobs’ death.@@http://current.com/shows/countdown/topic/occupy-wall-street@@ Olbermann’s former network, MSNBC, was the next one to air coverage in a Fox News-like manner. In fact, as a recent report from Politico illustrates beautifully, MSNBC and Current TV have been fawning over the protests in the same manner Fox did with the Tea Party movement in the months preceding the 2010 midterm elections.
This brings me to the question pundits have been sweating (or drooling) over: is #OccupyWallStreet the next Tea Party? Despite wanting to roll my eyes at a movement who’s title is a Twitter hashtag, I say that it’s a tentative “maybe.”
First of all, the movement is too young for any definitive answer. There is still time for the protests to lose steam or focus and simply peter out. From what I’ve gathered from news outlets, this is a real possibility. While the New York protest is seemingly transmitting the consistent message that they represent the 99 percent of Americans who were left disenfranchised by the result of former President Bill Clinton’s Wall Street deregulation and the subsequent bailout of 2008, other protests lack that coherence.
There were two separate demonstrations in Washington: one outside the White House concerning economic policy and a completely separate one that identifies with #OccupyWallStreet and rushed the Smithsonian to protest the use of drones in Afghanistan. In typical Portland fashion, the Occupy Portland demonstrators are going to decide what exactly they’re protesting somewhere down the road.
With that said, the New York demonstrations have been increasing in size for the past month (up to 30,000), and Mayor Michael Bloomberg granted the protesters permission to occupy Zuccotti Park.@@http://gothamist.com/2011/10/10/bloomberg_says_wall_street_proteste.php@@ On top of that, there has been nonstop media coverage since 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.
If the nationwide protests gain coherence, this could be the start of a movement that will affect real change in the same (but also opposite) way the Tea Party has. This is primarily because the progressives have the base that elected Barack Obama, and despite the shortcomings of the current administration, they are stalwart in their beliefs and are finally agitated enough to speak out. On top of this, they have the support of many celebrity voices (Kanye West dropped in to tell the protesters he’s going to let them finish) and the backing of the administration. The danger is that this movement could end up just like the 2008 election, where a large base of support is garnered and then goes back to sleep after they reach some minor goal.
It is my sincerest hope the progressive voice is heard, but the pragmatic voice is more importantly. As of Monday, only half of Americans apparently even know these protests are going on.
As a college-educated community, we are the voice of the millennials@@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y@@, and therefore we have the power. It is our responsibility to get the word out. Facebook, and to a greater extent, Twitter are great ways to spread the news. Even word of mouth is proving to be useful. There are lessons to learn from 2008 and 2010, and I hate to say it, but many of those lessons can be learned by looking at the Teabaggers. Let’s just not let those lessons go to waste by letting these demonstrations fade into obscurity before they make an impact. The main point is to spread awareness.