A single angry rant by a little known on-air business news editor (and may I say, an absolute nutter) named Rick Santelli on CNBC on February 19th 2009 effectively gave birth to the Tea Party movement. Within 20 months it had morphed from a series of disparate protests into a political and electoral juggernaut. It ended up dominating the 2010 midterm elections and not only handed over Congress to the Repulican party, but scared its leaders so much the Republicans now find themselves wedged into an ideological gap so tight even most of Ronald Reagan's policies wouldn't fit. Similiarly, when a Tunisian fruit vendor, even more of a nobody, named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 17th 2010 half the Arab world was soon thrown into violent revolution. Like many revolutions, in both these cases a single widely visible spark ignited an inferno of political and economic tensions that had been simmering for years.
Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th 2011. It was prompted, oddly enought, by a Canadian activist group called Adbusters and over the last few months has spread to hundreds of cities around the world, especially in the United States and Europe. While the Adbusters campaign and the initial demonstrations in Zucotti Park in New York were the spark that ignited it, mountaing economic tensions and continuing political deadlock in Washington are what have sustained it.
The protestor's greviances are numerous and, in my opinion, extensive and largely justified. Five mintues of research on the internet evidences just how vast the wealth gap in the US has become. An excellent article on this complete with detailed charts and graphs can be found here-
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
It is interesting to compare the scope and views of Occupy Wall Street's to its far-right cousin the Tea Party. Rick Santelli's rant didn't come from nowhere, it was sparked by the Wall Street Bailouts which started under George Bush (though you'll rarely see the Tea Party or their allies on Fox News admit this), the Obama stimulus package and the massive blowing out of the federal deficit from the second half of 2008 onwards. The economic blows the United States has taken recently have greatly shocked its population and deeply divided political opinion on how they should be fixed. This has, even when the Democrats controlled the Whitehouse and all of Congress from 2008-2010, led to bitter political partisanship which only worsened once the Republicans took over the lower house in January 2011. Congress's approval rating, which was already in the '20s before Obama took office, has now plunged to around 10-12%, a new record low and a far cry from the 40-60% approval it enjoyed towards the end of Bill Clinton's term in office.
Public frustration at this reversal in the fortunes of the American economy is inevitable, but the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have become fired up for often widely varying, and in some cases directly opposing reasons. Of course both these movments are diverse. The right has been criticising Occupy Wall Street since its inception for having a vague message. On the O'Reilly Factor a few weeks ago a guest described the protests thus, 'I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit power this is the sludge you'd get.' OK fair enough. But how many times have you seen Tea Partiers ranting on about Obama's birth certificate? Or the ground zero mosque, Bill Ayers, the EPA, planned parenthood, NPR funding, Obama's 'Tsars' and a dozen other nonsense 'controversies' proudly manufactured on Fox News, the latest of which is the 'Solyndra' scandal. All of this nonsense of course served the purpose of maximising Republican turnout at the 2010 midterms, and it almost makes me wish Democrats would better coordinate their efforts to stir up similiarly crazy outrage on the left.
Bill Maher, who I'm a big fan of, wittingly summed up the situation last week-
The most astonishing thing about the Tea Party these last two years has been how much power it has been able to wield despite its approval ratings with the general public varying between mediocre and abysmal. Here Gallup records the movement's rise and, lately, its fall-
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tea-partys-approval-rating-drops-to-new-low-new-gallup-poll/politics/2011/08/10/25290
As can be clearly seen, no more than 30% of American's ever approved of the Tea Party's political doctrine and actions, with most remaining largely impartial. It seems that, ouside of the thick shell of super-hardened bullshit that surrounds Fox News, the vast majority of Americans are basically sensible people and understand that whatever 'class warfare' and 'redistribution of wealth' is currently occuring in the US is primarily directed by the richest 1% against the poor and middle class, not the other way round. On a sidenote, here's Jon Stewart's summary from a few months ago of some of the most notable lies Fox has espoused since Obama became President-
(I apologise for the poor quality, videos on the Daily Show's website aren't available in Australia)
The Occupy Wall Street demonstators on the other hand have gained widespread support, consistently scoring a higher approval rating than the Tea Party in polls over the Past 6 weeks. Of course with the movement still in its infancy this could change, but the vast majority all Americans have expressed sympathy with their views-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/13/poll-occupy-wall-st-much-more-popular-than-obama-tea-party/
Anther interesting article here lists the major differences between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Its obviously from the point of view of an Occupier, but I think a majority of Americans would agree with most of this list-
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/15-major-differences-between-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party-protests/question-2245857/
Notable is how relatively populist and grassroots the Occupy movement really is. This contrasts with how quickly the Tea Party was hijacked by the corporate right-wing media way back in 2009, with any genuine concerns they had about government bailouts of the rich and ballooning deficits quickly turned into a crusade against the usual hyped-up straw man threasts posed by socialism, atheism, environmentalism and political correctness. However given how timid most Democrats have been in supporting left-wing causes in recent years, it is unlikely that Washington insiders will be running the show where Occupy Wall Street is concerned compared to how warped the Tea Party's goals have become. The Wall Street Bailouts prompted the formation of the Tea Party (i.e. the government's initial response to the problems poised by the global financial crisis) while Occupy Wall Street's response has been more delayed, and it only appeared once efforts to solve the United State's deficit problems stalled with what little was accomplished with the deficit reduction deal congress passed several months ago. This could be taken as a further sign of the movement's grassroots authenticity and its embodiment of people's immense frustration with Washington.
As for who is to blame for the massive debt the US currently owes, this chart lays things out quite clearly-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
As can be seen, at the end of Bill Clinton's term in office US federal government spending was only 18% of GDP while 21% of GDP was taxed, creating a large budget surplus which would have been very handy in paying off the debt as Clinton had started to do. Yet by the start of Obama's term in office in January 2009 the amounts of GDP spent and taxed by the federal government had reversed, with spending now at 21% of GDP and taxes at only 18%. That's a reversal of 6% of GDP or about $800 billion thanks to two wars, the continuing expansion of entitlement spending and massive and unnecessary tax cuts across the board. Then towards the end of 2008 the global financial crisis hits and combined with stimulus spending (40% of which was Republican tax cuts by the way), taxation decreases further to just 15% of GDP (yeah, because Obama's a socialist who increased taxes...?) while spending, mainly due to increased unemployment benefits and welfare spending due to the soaring unemployment rate, increases to 24%. This is again an increase in the annual deficit of 6% of GDP which is only partly Obama's fault, and had he been able to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich at the end of 2010 and end other tax breaks as he's been urging congress to do for the past three years we wouldn't be in as dire a fix as we are now. Mostly for these reasons I'd maintain that the Occupy protestors have much more valid complaints to make about the actions of Washington and Wall Street over the past decade than the Tea Party's hype. While I'd agree that entitlements need to be reformed, the US's budget woes are overwhelmingly more a revenue problem than a spending problem. Over the past two years we should have passed a deficit reduction deal similiar to Ronald Reagan's in 1982, which was made up of about 80% revenue increases and 20% spending cuts. Don't belive me? Have a look at this-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-budget-deals-of-reagan-bush-clinton-and-obama-in-one-chart/2011/07/06/gIQA98w11H_blog.html
The tenacity and dedication of the Occupy protestors, peacefully resisting forceful actions by governments to disband their encampments, has likely gained them more public support then they've lost due to the messy and violent manner in which the protests have sometimes been broken up. A dissenting voice to this view is George Will (a notable right-leaning media personality) who said something strange the other week-
“I wish for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators a long life and ample publicity, for two reasons. I think they do represent the spirit and intellect of the American left, but also I remember the 1960s. We had four years of demonstrations like this leading up to 1968, when the Nixon-Wallace vote was 57 percent, the country reacting against the demonstrators and the Republicans went on to win five of the next six presidential elections.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/george-will-occupy-wall-street-represents-the-spirit-and-intellect-of-the-american-left/
Personally, I think this is fantasy. It is another example of how distorted a worldview the Republicans really have. Are they really still blaming the loss of the Vietnam War on a bunch of dirty hippies complaining about it back at home? Does George Will not realise that support for the Vietnam War plunged from a modest 52% in August 1965 to a dismal 28% by May 1971? Also that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and even George Bush Snr. were idealogically about as right-wing as say, Barack Obama?
At the moment, the Occupy Wall Street movement is at a tipping point. Since the protests began in September many cities across the US have begun running out of patience with the demonstrator's continued presence. Just this week in several cities, notably Oakland and Atlanta, local governments have broken up the encampments by force, not without casualties. Often this use of force has been justified by saying that the protestors have 'made their point'. While the doggedness of the protestors has largely been a virtue until now, the public could tire of the 'occupying' theme before long, especially given the sheer inconvenience to local residents some of the larger protests have entailed. The question however, is how can the movement continue in a form that doesn't heighten tensions with the authorities further but isn't seen as a retreat and the end of the entire campaign?
I'd suggest taking a leaf out of the Tea Party's book and taking their campaign model to heart. Married with genuine populism, it could alter the nature of public debate in the US over the next few years even more dramatically than the Tea Party has over the last two. Lets take a look at what they did-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America
Emulating the example of the Republican's 1994 midterms victory, which was notable for its 'Contract with America' championed by then Republican congressman Newt Gingrich. In 2010 the Republicans did it again with their 'Contract from America'. It is notable for its simplicity, how extraordinarily far-right its positions are, and the grassroots process by which it came about. It started with the creation of a website in mid-2009, just a few months after the Tea Party began, where any Tea Party activists could make suggestions for the 'Contract'. After a few months of this, during which the it received significant press coverage, hundreds of thousands of people had voted on the suggested ideas. Finally, with the cooperation of various conservative advocacy groups and Republicans in congress, the most popular ideas were presented at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2010 and voted on, leaving a list of the top ten which were soon basically adopted by the mainstream Republican Party and continue to be the basis for their policies today.
That my friends, is how you get things done in a democracy. Protesting can be very useful in getting a point across, but without proper coordination even a politically popular movement can struggle to get off the ground. It is also notable that during and after this whole process and leading up to the 2010 midterms Tea Party protests continued nationwide (culminating in the 'Restoring Honor Rally' in Washington D.C. in August 2010), so don't worry, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to protest against corporate greed in future. If you go to the Occupy Wall Street Facebook page (which by the way recently passed 100,000 likes) one of the notes on the page, titled 'Demands' lists just that, a list of demands that appears to have been written up by a rather small group of activists. At the bottom of the note it urges you to 'Demand and Distribute' the list. This method of doing things seems completely backwards, people should not be being asked to distribute those demands, but to contribute to them.
I'd suggest organising, starting right now, a major Progressive Political Action Conference early next year. Just as the Republicans are nominating which lunatic candidate they want to take on Obama next November, progressive activists countrywide can be voting on a platform for the Democrats and, hopefully, President Obama to embrace later that year. Just as the Tea Party formed their own Congressional Caucus which after the midterms came to include 62 members of the House and 4 senators, Occupy Wall Street could either form its own 'Occupy' caucus of expand the already existing Progressive Caucus. In the meantime we should be taking votes, hopefully with millions of people participating over the course of a few months, on what concrete policy objectives Occupy Wall Street seeks to achieve. The 'occupation' of city centre's across the county needn't end completely, but can take place intermittently. Occupy them on the weekends for instance, camping overnight from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. The Tea Party over the last two years has staged its biggest protests, with tens of thousands of people attending in some cities, on Tax day, April 15th. We need to choose a day, or several days, for the Occupy protests to flex their muscle fully over the next year. May I suggest September 15, the anniversary of Lehman Brother's collapse in 2008? Or August 27th, the day of the Republican's National Convention next year? All that is needed is several days next year when millions of Americans can briefly occupy every major city centre in the country, and even more importantly 'occupy' the attention of the media and everyone in Washington.
One thing everyone supporting Occupy Wall Street should remember is that this isn't quite the Arab Spring. The US may have fallen to 17th place on the Democracy Index behind the Czech Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#2010_rankings, but it is still, despite the hype, a full democracy. A people's revolt may be quite badly needed against Wall Street, the tax-evading rich and their cronies in Washington, the military-industrial complex, the Pharmaceutical lobby, the Prison-industrial complex and the political paralysis in Washington. But revolts needn't be violent, lets give the political process one more chance shall we? And this time, without Wall Street and Washington hijacking and running the show, maybe we can get some serious things done. We need to send out a message to Fox News, the Republican party and every other anarchist conservative stain on the American dream today. Lets make them end up regretting how far they've pushed the American people, and hopefully Occupy Wall Street will be looked back on by historians as a genuine once in a generation people's revolt by the dispossessed many against the despotic few, before things got too out of hand and the United State's risked slipping into a state of stagnation and decline.
Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th 2011. It was prompted, oddly enought, by a Canadian activist group called Adbusters and over the last few months has spread to hundreds of cities around the world, especially in the United States and Europe. While the Adbusters campaign and the initial demonstrations in Zucotti Park in New York were the spark that ignited it, mountaing economic tensions and continuing political deadlock in Washington are what have sustained it.
The protestor's greviances are numerous and, in my opinion, extensive and largely justified. Five mintues of research on the internet evidences just how vast the wealth gap in the US has become. An excellent article on this complete with detailed charts and graphs can be found here-
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
It is interesting to compare the scope and views of Occupy Wall Street's to its far-right cousin the Tea Party. Rick Santelli's rant didn't come from nowhere, it was sparked by the Wall Street Bailouts which started under George Bush (though you'll rarely see the Tea Party or their allies on Fox News admit this), the Obama stimulus package and the massive blowing out of the federal deficit from the second half of 2008 onwards. The economic blows the United States has taken recently have greatly shocked its population and deeply divided political opinion on how they should be fixed. This has, even when the Democrats controlled the Whitehouse and all of Congress from 2008-2010, led to bitter political partisanship which only worsened once the Republicans took over the lower house in January 2011. Congress's approval rating, which was already in the '20s before Obama took office, has now plunged to around 10-12%, a new record low and a far cry from the 40-60% approval it enjoyed towards the end of Bill Clinton's term in office.
Public frustration at this reversal in the fortunes of the American economy is inevitable, but the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have become fired up for often widely varying, and in some cases directly opposing reasons. Of course both these movments are diverse. The right has been criticising Occupy Wall Street since its inception for having a vague message. On the O'Reilly Factor a few weeks ago a guest described the protests thus, 'I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit power this is the sludge you'd get.' OK fair enough. But how many times have you seen Tea Partiers ranting on about Obama's birth certificate? Or the ground zero mosque, Bill Ayers, the EPA, planned parenthood, NPR funding, Obama's 'Tsars' and a dozen other nonsense 'controversies' proudly manufactured on Fox News, the latest of which is the 'Solyndra' scandal. All of this nonsense of course served the purpose of maximising Republican turnout at the 2010 midterms, and it almost makes me wish Democrats would better coordinate their efforts to stir up similiarly crazy outrage on the left.
Bill Maher, who I'm a big fan of, wittingly summed up the situation last week-
The most astonishing thing about the Tea Party these last two years has been how much power it has been able to wield despite its approval ratings with the general public varying between mediocre and abysmal. Here Gallup records the movement's rise and, lately, its fall-
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tea-partys-approval-rating-drops-to-new-low-new-gallup-poll/politics/2011/08/10/25290
As can be clearly seen, no more than 30% of American's ever approved of the Tea Party's political doctrine and actions, with most remaining largely impartial. It seems that, ouside of the thick shell of super-hardened bullshit that surrounds Fox News, the vast majority of Americans are basically sensible people and understand that whatever 'class warfare' and 'redistribution of wealth' is currently occuring in the US is primarily directed by the richest 1% against the poor and middle class, not the other way round. On a sidenote, here's Jon Stewart's summary from a few months ago of some of the most notable lies Fox has espoused since Obama became President-
(I apologise for the poor quality, videos on the Daily Show's website aren't available in Australia)
The Occupy Wall Street demonstators on the other hand have gained widespread support, consistently scoring a higher approval rating than the Tea Party in polls over the Past 6 weeks. Of course with the movement still in its infancy this could change, but the vast majority all Americans have expressed sympathy with their views-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/13/poll-occupy-wall-st-much-more-popular-than-obama-tea-party/
Anther interesting article here lists the major differences between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Its obviously from the point of view of an Occupier, but I think a majority of Americans would agree with most of this list-
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/15-major-differences-between-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party-protests/question-2245857/
Notable is how relatively populist and grassroots the Occupy movement really is. This contrasts with how quickly the Tea Party was hijacked by the corporate right-wing media way back in 2009, with any genuine concerns they had about government bailouts of the rich and ballooning deficits quickly turned into a crusade against the usual hyped-up straw man threasts posed by socialism, atheism, environmentalism and political correctness. However given how timid most Democrats have been in supporting left-wing causes in recent years, it is unlikely that Washington insiders will be running the show where Occupy Wall Street is concerned compared to how warped the Tea Party's goals have become. The Wall Street Bailouts prompted the formation of the Tea Party (i.e. the government's initial response to the problems poised by the global financial crisis) while Occupy Wall Street's response has been more delayed, and it only appeared once efforts to solve the United State's deficit problems stalled with what little was accomplished with the deficit reduction deal congress passed several months ago. This could be taken as a further sign of the movement's grassroots authenticity and its embodiment of people's immense frustration with Washington.
As for who is to blame for the massive debt the US currently owes, this chart lays things out quite clearly-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
As can be seen, at the end of Bill Clinton's term in office US federal government spending was only 18% of GDP while 21% of GDP was taxed, creating a large budget surplus which would have been very handy in paying off the debt as Clinton had started to do. Yet by the start of Obama's term in office in January 2009 the amounts of GDP spent and taxed by the federal government had reversed, with spending now at 21% of GDP and taxes at only 18%. That's a reversal of 6% of GDP or about $800 billion thanks to two wars, the continuing expansion of entitlement spending and massive and unnecessary tax cuts across the board. Then towards the end of 2008 the global financial crisis hits and combined with stimulus spending (40% of which was Republican tax cuts by the way), taxation decreases further to just 15% of GDP (yeah, because Obama's a socialist who increased taxes...?) while spending, mainly due to increased unemployment benefits and welfare spending due to the soaring unemployment rate, increases to 24%. This is again an increase in the annual deficit of 6% of GDP which is only partly Obama's fault, and had he been able to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich at the end of 2010 and end other tax breaks as he's been urging congress to do for the past three years we wouldn't be in as dire a fix as we are now. Mostly for these reasons I'd maintain that the Occupy protestors have much more valid complaints to make about the actions of Washington and Wall Street over the past decade than the Tea Party's hype. While I'd agree that entitlements need to be reformed, the US's budget woes are overwhelmingly more a revenue problem than a spending problem. Over the past two years we should have passed a deficit reduction deal similiar to Ronald Reagan's in 1982, which was made up of about 80% revenue increases and 20% spending cuts. Don't belive me? Have a look at this-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-budget-deals-of-reagan-bush-clinton-and-obama-in-one-chart/2011/07/06/gIQA98w11H_blog.html
The tenacity and dedication of the Occupy protestors, peacefully resisting forceful actions by governments to disband their encampments, has likely gained them more public support then they've lost due to the messy and violent manner in which the protests have sometimes been broken up. A dissenting voice to this view is George Will (a notable right-leaning media personality) who said something strange the other week-
“I wish for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators a long life and ample publicity, for two reasons. I think they do represent the spirit and intellect of the American left, but also I remember the 1960s. We had four years of demonstrations like this leading up to 1968, when the Nixon-Wallace vote was 57 percent, the country reacting against the demonstrators and the Republicans went on to win five of the next six presidential elections.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/george-will-occupy-wall-street-represents-the-spirit-and-intellect-of-the-american-left/
Personally, I think this is fantasy. It is another example of how distorted a worldview the Republicans really have. Are they really still blaming the loss of the Vietnam War on a bunch of dirty hippies complaining about it back at home? Does George Will not realise that support for the Vietnam War plunged from a modest 52% in August 1965 to a dismal 28% by May 1971? Also that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and even George Bush Snr. were idealogically about as right-wing as say, Barack Obama?
At the moment, the Occupy Wall Street movement is at a tipping point. Since the protests began in September many cities across the US have begun running out of patience with the demonstrator's continued presence. Just this week in several cities, notably Oakland and Atlanta, local governments have broken up the encampments by force, not without casualties. Often this use of force has been justified by saying that the protestors have 'made their point'. While the doggedness of the protestors has largely been a virtue until now, the public could tire of the 'occupying' theme before long, especially given the sheer inconvenience to local residents some of the larger protests have entailed. The question however, is how can the movement continue in a form that doesn't heighten tensions with the authorities further but isn't seen as a retreat and the end of the entire campaign?
I'd suggest taking a leaf out of the Tea Party's book and taking their campaign model to heart. Married with genuine populism, it could alter the nature of public debate in the US over the next few years even more dramatically than the Tea Party has over the last two. Lets take a look at what they did-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America
Emulating the example of the Republican's 1994 midterms victory, which was notable for its 'Contract with America' championed by then Republican congressman Newt Gingrich. In 2010 the Republicans did it again with their 'Contract from America'. It is notable for its simplicity, how extraordinarily far-right its positions are, and the grassroots process by which it came about. It started with the creation of a website in mid-2009, just a few months after the Tea Party began, where any Tea Party activists could make suggestions for the 'Contract'. After a few months of this, during which the it received significant press coverage, hundreds of thousands of people had voted on the suggested ideas. Finally, with the cooperation of various conservative advocacy groups and Republicans in congress, the most popular ideas were presented at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2010 and voted on, leaving a list of the top ten which were soon basically adopted by the mainstream Republican Party and continue to be the basis for their policies today.
That my friends, is how you get things done in a democracy. Protesting can be very useful in getting a point across, but without proper coordination even a politically popular movement can struggle to get off the ground. It is also notable that during and after this whole process and leading up to the 2010 midterms Tea Party protests continued nationwide (culminating in the 'Restoring Honor Rally' in Washington D.C. in August 2010), so don't worry, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to protest against corporate greed in future. If you go to the Occupy Wall Street Facebook page (which by the way recently passed 100,000 likes) one of the notes on the page, titled 'Demands' lists just that, a list of demands that appears to have been written up by a rather small group of activists. At the bottom of the note it urges you to 'Demand and Distribute' the list. This method of doing things seems completely backwards, people should not be being asked to distribute those demands, but to contribute to them.
I'd suggest organising, starting right now, a major Progressive Political Action Conference early next year. Just as the Republicans are nominating which lunatic candidate they want to take on Obama next November, progressive activists countrywide can be voting on a platform for the Democrats and, hopefully, President Obama to embrace later that year. Just as the Tea Party formed their own Congressional Caucus which after the midterms came to include 62 members of the House and 4 senators, Occupy Wall Street could either form its own 'Occupy' caucus of expand the already existing Progressive Caucus. In the meantime we should be taking votes, hopefully with millions of people participating over the course of a few months, on what concrete policy objectives Occupy Wall Street seeks to achieve. The 'occupation' of city centre's across the county needn't end completely, but can take place intermittently. Occupy them on the weekends for instance, camping overnight from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. The Tea Party over the last two years has staged its biggest protests, with tens of thousands of people attending in some cities, on Tax day, April 15th. We need to choose a day, or several days, for the Occupy protests to flex their muscle fully over the next year. May I suggest September 15, the anniversary of Lehman Brother's collapse in 2008? Or August 27th, the day of the Republican's National Convention next year? All that is needed is several days next year when millions of Americans can briefly occupy every major city centre in the country, and even more importantly 'occupy' the attention of the media and everyone in Washington.
One thing everyone supporting Occupy Wall Street should remember is that this isn't quite the Arab Spring. The US may have fallen to 17th place on the Democracy Index behind the Czech Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#2010_rankings, but it is still, despite the hype, a full democracy. A people's revolt may be quite badly needed against Wall Street, the tax-evading rich and their cronies in Washington, the military-industrial complex, the Pharmaceutical lobby, the Prison-industrial complex and the political paralysis in Washington. But revolts needn't be violent, lets give the political process one more chance shall we? And this time, without Wall Street and Washington hijacking and running the show, maybe we can get some serious things done. We need to send out a message to Fox News, the Republican party and every other anarchist conservative stain on the American dream today. Lets make them end up regretting how far they've pushed the American people, and hopefully Occupy Wall Street will be looked back on by historians as a genuine once in a generation people's revolt by the dispossessed many against the despotic few, before things got too out of hand and the United State's risked slipping into a state of stagnation and decline.
