What Do You Call Occupy Wall Street? A Start

What is happening these days at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, at Kiener Plaza in St. Louis and in dozens of other cities around the country, may or may not be of lasting national significance.

To watch MSNBC is to see the Occupy Wall Street and its spin-off demonstrations described as the first stirrings of class revolt. To watch Fox News is see them ridiculed and dismissed as theater.

To delve into news accounts, blogs and Facebook posts of the Occupy groups is to come away confused about their goals, baffled by their tactics, shocked their political naivete and disappointed in their weak grasp of detail.

But it's useful to remember that the whole thing began only a month ago. It's too young to be a full-bore movement, too scattershot to be very effective. It is, however, an outcry — a recognition that some fundamental tenets of the American social contract are in tatters.

Will it spread and coalesce? It's too early to say. When the rains of November and snows of December start to fall, will people still be willing to live in tents pitched on concrete? Or will it have a metamorphosis into something else, perhaps more radical, perhaps more effective?

It's possible, maybe even probable. The problems the Occupiers have sort of identified really are far worse than they know.

The Occupiers style themselves as the heirs of the Arab Spring protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, which is to overestimate the burdens of, say, overdue student loans and underestimate those of, say, government torture and corruption.

America has its own set of problems. Massive wealth inequality has converged with structural economic dislocation caused by globalization and digitalization. The result is an economy that doesn't offer much promise of a middle-class lifestyle.

A new report by two former Census Bureau officials says that median household income fell by 6.7 percent in the two years since the 2007-2008 recession officially ended. That's a steeper fall than during the recession itself.

Now add to that the deep cynicism about a corporatized political system that has been closed to anyone without thousands — even millions — of dollars to contribute to political campaigns. Stir in fears that the social safety net is under attack and disappointment that a Democratic president who campaigned on "hope" and "change" hasn't been able to deliver much of either.

The result is "a feeling of mass injustice," says the Occupy Wall Street manifesto, which includes a long and eclectic list of specific causes and grievances — which an asterisk notes is not intended to be all-inclusive.

Mortgage foreclosures. Corporate bailouts. Executive bonuses. Factory farming. Animal cruelty. Corporate control of news media. And so on.

The problem isn't that they're not onto something. It's that they're onto everything.

Someone within the Occupy leadership — and therein lies a problem, because the Occupiers are at the touchy-feely stage in which they believe everyone is a leader — should absorb Saul Alinsky's 1971 book "Rules for Radicals."

Sure, it's leftist, but in 2008, even the first tea party organizers found it useful. They narrowed their focus to one issue — government spending — voted in Republican primaries and packed Congress.

"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition," Alinsky wrote. And "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Sooner or later, the Occupiers or some successor movement will get around to that. The trick will be to avoid being co-opted — as the Tea Party was — by big-money interests.

Speaking of whom: On Wednesday, Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, said he'd be happy to meet with Occupy Wall Street protesters, calling their concerns "completely understandable."

Let the co-optation begin.

"We are the 99 percent," the Occupiers say, a catchy slogan that overlooks the fact that a household at the 99th income percentile has $506,000 a year in taxable income. Probably not many of them can be found sleeping in tents.

In fact, most of the Occupiers probably are at the low end of the 80 percent, those who control only 13 percent of all forms of wealth (cash, stocks, bonds, real estate, retirement savings). At 81 percent, you're paying taxes on nearly $100,000 a year. You're not rich, but you're making it. But relative to the those at the top, you're losing ground fast.

This kind of information is easy enough to obtain — the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institute is a good place to start — but the Occupiers throw out random figures that often underestimate the income gap. They'll get smarter.

They'll also get smarter about tactics. Holding marches to the Bank of America branch in St. Louis or to bankers' apartment buildings in New York doesn't make compelling TV. Picketing a country club or corporate shareholders meeting might, but you'd have to be willing to be arrested, which isn't pleasant.

Cops have a job to do. In New York and Boston they've overreacted. In St. Louis they're doing it with admirable restraint, as well they should, given the economy's effect on public employee salaries and pensions.

You never know when a moment will become a movement. On Wednesday, Nov. 30, 1955, Rosa Parks rode a Montgomery, Ala., bus home from work without incident. The next evening she refused to give up her seat. The cause was right, but the struggle continues. Lasting change takes courage, persistence and dynamic leadership.

The Occupiers aren't there yet. But they've started.

 

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