Greensboro is Occupied

I was out of town this past weekend when I started seeing posts on Facebook about "Occupy Greensboro" -- a hometown rendition of the "Occupy Wall Street" protest that started in September in NYC.   I have to admit, I'm really happy to see the movement take hold and grow, and really proud of my fellow Greensboro-ites who are adding their voices to so many others.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm an aging hippie, so perhaps civil protest is in my blood. I grew up in the era of marching for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam war. My generation was socially active; we had a strong bent to justice and equality. In the years since, I've wondered what happened to the spirit and energy that informed our youth -- dissipated, I suppose, in material comfort and general ennui. Honestly, I've been too cynical and weary myself to muster much give-a-damn for quite a while.

But the Occupiers have something going on. In the words of Buffalo Springfield "there's something happening here." To my chagrin, a lot of people are saying "what it is ain't exactly clear." For weeks, the media didn't give much attention at all to what was happening on Wall Street. Then, when it could no longer ignore the fuss, they honed in on movement's lack of demands or clear purpose. I think it's perfectly clear myself.

The average person is darned sick of the wealthiest 1% being such a burden to society. That's a different way of stating the issue, isn't it? We're accustomed to thinking of the poor as the real burden. Not so much. Pardon me for citing such an obviously socialist writer, but as William Morris said over a century ago:

... the existence of a privileged class is by no means necessary to the production of wealth, but rather for the "government" of the producers of wealth, or, in other words, for the upholding of privilege.
... No man [should] be tormented for the benefit of another - nay, no one man [should] be tormented for the benefit of Society. Nor, indeed, can that order be called Society which is not upheld for the benefit of every one of its members.

It's clear to me, and to many many others, that the privileged (what the occupiers refer to as the 1%) have been niggling too long with our government such that our laws and policies uphold privilege above common good. The current economic and political system (in practice, if not in theory) is designed to allow one small class to torment a much larger class. Many of us would like to see money out of government. 

It's perfectly clear: we would like to see Wall Street bankers and brokers gainfully employed and not employed for their gain alone.

Fogey-talk and what OSW wants

Folks are all atwitter about Occupy Wall Street. It was actually in its second week before I even heard about it, much to my chagrin. I couldn't believe that as much news as I consume, I was in the dark for so long. The media fell down on the job. But since the media can't seem to join the 21st century, I shouldn't be surprised.

One topic consuming public attention is that OWS protesters don't seem to know what they want -- they don't have any demands. While deeply sympathetic to the whole OWS affair and overtly cheering them on, I did kind of have the same misgivings. I saw their lack of articulated goals and demands as real weakness. They're not facing an enemy that will abide weakness.

But a recent editorial on CNN.com made some points that helped me understand.  In "Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it" Douglas Rushkoff threw the 21st century right in my face. He said what I just said two paragraphs up: "It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped." The media, our political system, our institutions of education, our penal system, our whole infrastructure are so totally old-fashioned that it's killing us.

The tech-savvy, especially the young, will have to pry the present from the cold dead hands of fogeydom. Goals and demands signal an endpoint, an old language fogeys can understand and use to tighten their grip. They want to continue the conversation in fogey-speak.

Fogey-speak makes inroads today, courtesy of Steve Jobs. Ironic how this brilliant boomer, and his untimely death, is being used to wag fogey-fingers at OWSers. For example, one of our local newspaper editors, Doug Clark, posts in his blog:

on a day when the country and world are mourning Steve Jobs, a great American innovator. His ingenuity, drive and vision have changed our culture, the way we live, work and relate to one another. Shouldn't his contributions be celebrated? Or is he just a member of that privileged 1 percent who should be dragged down to the level of the rest of us, his fortune confiscated and doled out to the less talented or hardworking? I don't think this conversation is really about the privileged and underprivileged at all. I think it's about givers and takers. Some people want those who have succeeded to give more so they can take more.

Confiscating the fortunes of ingenious visionaries in order to dole it out to less talented and hardworking people is fogey-speak par excellence. And it's not what the conversation is about. It's also not about a bunch of whining young people who don't appreciate the irony of using their smart phones to start a revolution against creators of smart phones. Fogey-speak.

Maybe a new way, a better way, is to leverage our gifts to create conversation -- to bring us together to reexamine our social contract and show, as Ruskoff says, that there "is an inappropriate and correctable disconnect between the abundance America produces and the scarcity its markets manufacture."