(for the "now what?" file) The Occupation doesn’t have to be over - The Washington Post

Occupy realized that the old approaches hadn’t worked. So it provided the media with a committed group of activists to cover, a good story line and excellent pictures. Paradoxically, its unconventional approach fit nicely with current media conventions. And its indifference to immediate political concerns gave the movement a freedom of action that others on the left did not have.

The breakup of some of Occupy’s encampments signals a new phase for the movement. This does not have to mean its end. On the contrary, it is an opportunity.

Let’s first dispense with a kind of narcissism that exists among Americans who lived through the 1960s and insist on seeing Occupy as nothing more than a rerun of the battles over Vietnam, Richard Nixon and the counterculture.

This frame is convenient to conservatives who hope to drive a wedge between working-class voters and the occupiers, much as Nixon brilliantly played construction workers against privileged hippies. That’s the theme of an outrageous advertisement assailing Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren by Crossroads GPS, the group associated with Karl Rove. It accuses Warren, a Democrat, of siding with occupiers who “attack police, do drugs and trash public parks.”

via www.washingtonpost.com