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October 18, 2011
Will OWS Have Next Steps?
Carroll Andrew Morse
Michael Morgenstern, a Brown University graduate and blogger sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement, does an excellent job of summing up OWS' political and organizational let's-call-them-challenges-for-now with this short passage...
Anarchy doesn’t work. Income disparity will always exist to some extent. Destroying a system rather than working with it (at least to some extent) is extremely dangerous, and very few people in history has shown themselves to be good at that. Change is difficult, and it requires a vision of an alternate future. If the vision is yet to be formed, we need a roadmap to the vision. And the greatest truth: not everybody can be represented in every element of this movement. Like a clever politician, the movement has allowed each member to see him or herself in it; but like any politician, its true test will come when it is asked to actually make a decision.
9:30 AM
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I read the original manifesto by one of the early movement leaders. It was diffuse, unfocused and widely impractical, more of a temper tantrum than a set of proposals.
If they focused on a few big vs small instead of left vs right issues, they might have been able to make common cause with the tea party. One issue would be "If its too big to fail, its too big period, so break it up" and another would be "Lets get rid of the fancy financial instruments that look very close to bucket shop gambling". These alone would be the work of years. Instead they tilt at every windmill in sight.
I'm sympathetic to those who have a huge non-dischargeable student loan debt. Where were their parents? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to let 18 year old kids commit to a mortgage level of debt? Oh, yeah, the colleges who benefited. How is it that this debt alone (except for unpaid taxes, which at least are negotiable) became non-dischargeable? I am more pleased than ever that my kids have no student debt.
So when will we see OccupyKStreet, OccupyPennsylvaniaAvenue and OccupyLongworthRayburnRusselDirksenBuildings?
Posted by: chuckR at October 18, 2011 11:10 AM
Posted by: helen at October 19, 2011 6:25 AMAnarchy already reigns in downtown Providence because the rules have been suspended for this group.
Posted by: helen at October 19, 2011 6:38 AMI don't get this article. Why do we need a change and who says we do? Why do we need an alternate future? Maybe we just need to get back to basics,like loving families,devout religious beliefs and standing up for our God given rights as human beings.