It’s been bothering me lately, in regards to Occupy Wall Street. The critiques—so many of them are well-meaning, and so many of them are calling for the protesters to have read this or that pet theorist, to have studied the history of protest movements, to have been connected to organizers on the ground.
And the thing is: we live in a society that is structured specifically so that “the 99%,” most of us, DON’T do that. You don’t read Gramsci in public high schools. Fuck, I’m a leftist with a Master’s degree and I STILL haven’t read Gramsci. Yes, I know enough to understand the political implications of the term “occupy” besides sit-ins—but most people don’t, because they haven’t spent the last six years reading feminist blogs and all the theory and history they could get their hands on. They are struggling to get by.
Most people are not connected to community organizers on the ground because there are no community organizers on the ground in most neighborhoods. The only reason I know a lot of the people doing the work in NYC is because I worked for a TV show that featured a lot of them. A TV show that wasn’t watched by nearly as many people as the ones who watch the nightly network news.
Which plays into the question of why the protesters call for mainstream media coverage. It is wonderful to have an alternative media. I work in it, I believe in it, I love what I do and I wouldn’t trade it for a mainstream media job (and yes, I’ve actually had the opportunities to do so).
But my mom doesn’t read AlterNet—not even my writing. My uncle doesn’t watch Democracy Now.
I had a conversation with the cab driver who picked me up yesterday—yes, I’m going into Thomas Friedman territory I KNOW LEAVE ME ALONE—about Occupy Wall Street. Why? Because it was on the AM news radio station he listens to. And he had comments and thoughts about the arrests and was shocked when I told him one of my colleagues, a reporter, was arrested. That guy found out about it because the mainstream media covered it.
So many times the left would rather be pure than win battles. We would rather be self-assured that we are right, that we always use the appropriate language, that we have read the right theorists and the right histories and our friends are refreshingly diverse and we recycle and buy long-lasting lightbulbs.
But right now, Occupy Wall Street is getting in people’s heads. It’s doing it by being there, day after day, week after week (now Week 3). It’s creating a space, a church of dissent, as Matt Stoller called it, where you can go and make friends, where you can be fed—ANYONE can grab a free meal, which is absolutely a draw for unemployed people struggling to make ends meet—and where you can borrow books from an ever-growing library, where you can join a teach-in—Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz was there yesterday explaining economics to people—and where you can learn.
It’s not perfect. Of course it’s not perfect. The incident on the bridge was a clusterfuck and 700+ people spent a night kettled in the rain and then in jail because of it.
But it’s attracting people beyond the usual suspects, and it’s creating a space where you can learn. Because most people? They get radicalized when something happens to them. They get angry when they can’t pay the rent but they hear that Bank of America got bailed out—and then turned around and charged them $5 to use their debit card.
That’s not pure or perfect or theory or nice. It’s true, though.
So what does it say about us, when we say “They don’t know their history!” Who was supposed to teach it to them? They don’t know the community groups on the ground—how would they, unless an organizer came to their door? And we all know how woefully underfunded community organizations are. We all know how they’ve been endlessly attacked by the Right for just these reasons. Just like public education.
End rant. Probably not, actually. But for now.
