The participants of the ‘Occupy’ movement are a motley crew of diverse peoples that spans continents, unified by a visceral sense of injustice and anger at the current state of politics.
This transnational protest – from Wall Street in the US to London in the UK– has been criticized as too general, too vague, too abstract: what does “fighting to strengthen democracy, and to end the domination of big money interests” look like exactly? How do we go about doing that? Some say these goals are too lofty, idealistic, unrealistic.
But tempting as it is to focus on the practicability of ‘Occupy’s’ objectives, doing so would be erroneous, especially since most agree on its premises.
Money rules the world. It’s a simple principle– I scratch your back, you scratch mine. The symbiotic relationship between decision-makers and their sources of money is both obvious and hidden at the same time.
Big corporations don’t fund only parties who promise openly to legislate in their favor; they are known to fund multiple parties at the same time, in the same race. Go to the Federal Election Commission’s website, check out contributions made to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, and marvel at the overlap.
In return, political candidates find themselves hard-pressed not to say no to big money. Running for office is notoriously expensive – staff salaries, transport costs, rent, campaign materials etc. Not something Joe Six-Pack would do; one has to be quite financially comfortable and/or able to get huge sums of money to get in the game.
Once in office, it’s the politician’s turn to do some back-scratching. Away from public scrutiny now that campaigning is over, he slips in a favorable clause for his benefactor in a 500 page bill; he leaves a loophole in the draft waiting in the pipeline.
No one notices that the average voter has no impact on how decisions that affect him are made. Right off the bat, voters choose from a slate of candidates who are in the pockets of big corporations. ‘Ideological’ differences between parties are reduced to political flavors. It should come as no surprise then that everyone in government, whatever his/her political leaning, is tied in some way to big money. Few, if any, truly represent ordinary folk.
Therefore, democracy, as practiced today, urgently needs defibrillation and maybe a heart bypass. Money, like fat, is clogging up its arteries, preventing ordinary people from reaching the hubs of decision-making. The result: a world in financial crisis.
We all agree with that, at least to some extent. That said, what does camping out and rallying in the financial districts of the financial hubs of the world achieve in concrete terms?
I think the answer is both nothing much and plenty.
Things won’t change over night. But the very act of protest goes to the core of democracy – power to the people. Sooner or later, someone will have to listen. There’s nothing more inherently democratic than the organic gathering of people expressing themselves to their governments. By bringing the issue to the foreground of global consciousness, the movement compels world leaders to address the situation and not sweep it under the rug.
In a nutshell, the ‘Occupy’ movement is about reclaiming democracy from big money for the public.
Some are already taking note. On Oct 19, 2011, India’s prime minister called the movement a “timely warning“. It’s only a matter of time before other world leaders recognize and acknowledge the problem.
That first step to solving a problem – acknowledgement– is long overdue.
“Power to the people”?! “big money for the public”?! The author is clearly nothing more than a commie pinko trying to twist the minds of our women and children! I say hang ‘im high! On a side note I may have become illiterate again recently but “hard-pressed not to say no to big money” sounds like an unintentional double negative. As for the actual content I feel that the comment made by India’s prime minister is perhaps only a function of his countries economic ties with the west and ‘wall st.’ which remain more in line with exploited than exploiter despite its growing wealth, I suspect he can see more advantages to co-opting the protesters ‘goals’ than any western nation would but of course seen in the less dramatic terms of more equality of trade and not the restructuring of the democratic-capitalist system the protesters seek. His remarks then would not, I think, be a sign of whats to come in India or the west beyond perhaps more empty words. I’m not going to comment on the rest except to say you seem to have more faith in democracy than I.
There is a distinct sense that the author is making a rhetorical move akin to the Occupy movement. Both are offering platitudes – how can one disagree with statements like “power to the people” or “reclaim democracy” ? Both are certain that the lot of them outside St. Pauls are making a difference to the way the discourse of capitalism operates. But the very vagueness of Occupy will be its ideological downfall. I sympathize with them. But if they do not make specific and reasonable demands, then they will 1. be all too easily written off by all sides 2. have their ’cause’, whatever it is, -like what notlucas has alluded to- co-opted by any number of analysts and interpreters scrambling to understand what these protesters mean and what they want. The Occupy movement needs a stronger ontological position most, though, for the benefit of the protesters themselves. They are sacrificing so much for something that is the political equivalent of an emotion.
In short, the situation is far too complex. It’s not as simple as the author makes it out to be, and for things to change, the Occupy movement needs to be more than a disorganized bunch of tents – it needs to also be an organized list of tenets.