Andrew Ross Sorkin thinks Occupy Wall Street fizzled. Fair enough—he writes opinions, and in this one he has a lot of company. But he’s cherry-picked his evidence and one particular piece of it is rotten. It’s here:
Given the way the organization — if it can be called that — was purposely open to taking all comers, the assembly lost its sense of purpose as various intramural squabbles emerged about the group’s end game.I vividly remember watching one protester with a sign that read “Google = Jewish Billionaires.” Another protester ran over and ripped up the poster. The messages had become decidedly too mixed.
As it happens, I saw a man with the same sign yesterday in Zuccotti Park (can there be more than one?). In fact, I heard him before I saw him. He was carrying his sign on the street side of a police barricade, just outside Zuccotti Park. On the other side of the barricade, the Occupy Wall Street side, an Occupy supporter was shouting at the man that he should leave—I think there was even a bit of a scuffle—and the anti-Semite was claiming the right of free speech. He finally moved west on the sidewalk.
This anti-Semite, or possibly, I suppose, another one with the same sign, was photographed and reported on in Zuccotti Park last fall. (Here’s Michelle Goldberg’s report on this in Tablet.) Presumably that was when Sorkin witnessed the scene he vividly remembers.
It’s entirely fair for Sorkin to cite that incident. But another way of characterizing the matter, one more true to the nature of a decidedly irregular movement that is not, however, irregular in the way Sorkin suggests, would be:
Last year, Occupy often refused to police itself. It let drummers drum all night and annoy the neighbors. For a while, it couldn’t figure out how to handle an anti-Semitic picketer. Some protesters picketed him. One ripped up his poster.
(For many details here, I cheerfully disclose that I just published a book, Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street.)
Occupy Wall Street contains multitudes. Some are vile. Some make more sense than others. All social movements mix their messages. So does Sorkin.
Speaking of the vile, they do not appear to be relenting in their campaign against old norms of non-violence:
http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/violence.php
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11471-chris-hedges-vs-crimethinc-on-violence-will-we-get-the-debate-we-deserve
Too many within Occupy, it seems to me, are more interested in redefining than renouncing violence. (That Truth-Out article from last week, by the way, speaks favorably of Georges Sorel.)
#1 Posted by Shane Taylor, CJR on Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 01:26 PM
Here's the thing. What if the civil rights struggle was defined by every fringe commie who walked wearing a beret and carrying a sign of Mao Tse Tung? What would have happened had the media neglected to cover and condemn the fire hose, clubs, and dog tactics used to shut down public expression and protest? What if the violent rhetoric used by Malcolm X and other groups became the story of the civil rights movement and not the injustices which motivated it?
Would the civil rights movement have fizzled?
The responsibility for 'the fizzling' of the movement is not with the movers, it's not with the people on the fringe, it's not even with the outrageous actions used by governments to repress dissent, and it's not with the folks who want to fight back when beaten.
Yes the Black Bloc are a-holes who made ruckuses at the anti-globalization demonstrations long before OWS, but they are not the story of OWS.
And yet, these are the only stories that the media wants to tell, including you.
And I say if the media allowed the story to be about the fringes of dissent, about the provocateurs of dissent, and avoided the stories about the suppression of dissent, you'd still have segregation.
Because you wouldn't be talking about segregation and why it's wrong. You'd be talking about all the other bs instead.
OWS has a story. It's a story of inequality, a story of people walking scott free from trillion dollar injustices, it's about the public picking up the tab for the ineptness of our elites and how our elites are turning their backs on the public when its their turn to pick up the costs, it's about a thirty year class war in which one side alone is allowed to talk, never mind fight.
If the media cannot be bothered to report the facts which brought OWS into being and essence of what OWS is struggling for, then how is the public supposed to identify with their struggle and push for desired change?
The media reported the the stories of Emmett Till. The reported the actions of Bull Connor.
Where is the media when it comes to the stories of people abused by the banks? Where were they when it came to the pepper spraying of students and protestors?
I guess we've got to watch it on Dan Rather Reports:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0iUm-eNTo0
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 06:41 PM
If OWS has failed, it's because the media system has failed them. The media wanted to tell a story of a bunch of D.F.H. who wouldn't leave a park. That's Erin Burnett's story, that's Rick Santelli's. The same old hippies who were right about Iraq, right about deregulation, right about welfare reform, right about the tea party, right about unemployment, right about letting the bankers go scott....
None of that matters. Because all that matters in today's media is that if you're a hippie, we ain't going to listen to no raving hippies. We're going to point at your bongoes and call you a failure because you can't get your message out.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 06:51 PM
The thing is though, we're not the failures.
We're just people in the way.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 18 Sep 2012 at 06:55 PM
I missed Todd Gitlin's column about how reporters often do cherry-pick extremist or offensive comments at, for instance, Tea Party rallies, in order to discredit those people as 'out of the mainstream'. Sorkin notwithstanding, the original Tea Party rallies were much more roughly treated than were Occupy Wall Street gatherings, in spite of the violence and 'direct action' associated with the latter.
ABC News used to send around John Quinones to try to provoke 'racist' reactions at NASCAR rallies, or 'homophobic' reactions at fast-food restaurants, as a tactic in that area where culture and politics meet. As the current press hysterics about Romney's comments demonstrates, the press is far more likely to enjoy the 'gotcha' game with 'conservative' than with 'liberal' figures, for the obvious reason that, as urban bourgeois people, journalists are part of a left-leaning urban political environment. People on the left side of politics are far, far more likely to be neighbors, friends, even loved ones of political journalists. CJR, of course will not engage this argument. New York, you know? It's part of our political furniture.
'All good movements mix their messages.' Maybe, 'all movements mix their messages'.
#5 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 19 Sep 2012 at 12:22 PM
"I missed Todd Gitlin's column about how reporters often do cherry-pick extremist or offensive comments at, for instance, Tea Party rallies, in order to discredit those people as 'out of the mainstream'."
Yeah CNN really has to cherry pick to find comments like 'goat f--cking child molester' or 'How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?'.
We're just bastards for daring to pick big stupid cherries off the big stupid cherry tree.
"Sorkin notwithstanding, the original Tea Party rallies were much more roughly treated than were Occupy Wall Street gatherings, in spite of the violence and 'direct action' associated with the latter."
I guess I missed that between the Fox anchors taking turns cheerleading those rallies and the protesters packing arms to presidential town hall meetings. Give me an incident where one tea party member was pepper sprayed. Give me one incident involving OWS activists exchanging gunfire with police. OWS was put down on grounds involving at lot less provocation than the pissy tea party.
And the nice thing about OWS is they're not complete a-holes screaming about the blah people taking all of their stuff via non existent tyranny. They're pointing at the right buildings, talking about the right people, bringing up the right issues.
The tea party, on the other hand, are mainly the same bunch of republicans who tanked the country and then walked away blushing after GW Bush tainted the brand so bad, the next candidate lost to a guy with Hussein in his name.
They've done nothing but pass union busting, abortion restricting, voter suppressing, immigrant profiling, stand your grounding laws out of the ALEC legislative cookie cutter. They have not arrested the growth of government, but have made it more broken for the private sector to game and profit. (Oh geez, who benefits from that I wonder? Oh yeah! The a-holes who bankrolled the movement and have been buying state and local government for a generation!)
OWS's problem is that they yell at the right people to blame, but the wrong people to yell at. OWS takes on the owners and the powerful. The teaparty takes on welfare recepients and immigrants.
Ooooo, how fricken brave.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 19 Sep 2012 at 03:33 PM