SAM: One thing that’s different about Occupy Wall Street, is that, oftentimes, a typical protest, if there’s such a thing, takes the form of a march or a rally. So the group organization calls the protest for a certain time and place on a particular day, and if it’s a march, they tell you where they start and where you end up and they get a permit from the police and they walk and carry their signs from where they start to where they end up. And if a lot of people show up it’ll get media attention (or if it’s the Tea Party, ten of them will show up and it will get media attention), and the goal of it is to publicly manifest a particular view or dissatisfaction about something and have that enter into people’s conversations. If it’s a rally, the whole thing will take place in one place, and there will be a stage or platform that everybody looks at, and somebody will make speeches, and maybe someone will come in between and play some music and sing a song. And that’s a very typical format, and there have always been people who are dissatisfied with that, because it can leave you in the end with a certain sense of, what was that for? Although everyone knows really famous instances like, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But the March on Washington was just one event in a multi-decade-long movement of which everyone who was present had some experience organizing on the ground back wherever they came from, on a day-to-day basis, everyday. They didn’t all just say, "Let’s all have the March on Washington where Martin Luther King will say, I have a dream, and then black people will be equal!" It was just one part. It was a manifestation of the power of something that was already happening.
What was different about this was that it wasn’t a march and it wasn’t a rally, although they are having those things associated with it, but it’s an occupation, which really does seem to just be about creating a space. A lot of people I know who went, before they had been reading all these stories about the bailouts or income inequality or how much many more times a CEO makes than an average worker in the U.S. compared to other industrial countries or other things that they’d be complaining about, they might say, “Where is the outrage? Why aren’t people in the streets yelling?” And then when people do go in the streets, they’re like, “What are they doing there? What do they think is going to happen?”
But for some people, just seeing it there, it’s like, there it is, I can go there, and people there will share something with me, even if I don’t know what it is or I can’t put my finger on it. The longer the occupation lasts, the more people from different backgrounds and different perspectives will be able to come and share those views with the people there. The basically hardcore group who are actually occupying becomes this opening for all these other people, people who have jobs, people who can’t live in the street, people who are interested in pursuing political channels for their problems to go and interface and connect with the broad possible spectrum of people that are interested in achieving the same kinds of things that they are.
via www.theawl.com
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