Mission Impossible

Last week, the Occupy Wall Street movement celebrated its 1-year anniversary. While normally an anniversary is cause for celebration, this milestone is more embarrassing than anything. After 365 days, the Occupy Wall Street movement has yet to produce one tangible result due to its failure to conceptualize a solution to the problem of inequality for which they are fighting for. In the end, the most important thing that Occupy Wall Street accomplished was a mere year-long illustration of our right to free speech and the right to assemble.

To put it into perspective, its first important to get a brief introduction to the issue. For those of you who don’t know, the mission of Occupy Wall Street is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. Their main concern is that there is increasing polarization between the rich and the poor (echoed through their cries of “We are the 99%”) and that wealth needs to be redistributed. Although their message is clear, the movement has been unsuccessful because of its failure to coordinate and define an end goal.

In major cities around the country, people set up protests to fight against economic inequality. Huge groups of people gathered in financial districts, many people setting up camps in order to prove a point and threaten to not leave until there was change. While at first glance this may seem like a good idea, there is something irrational about TAKING OFF WORK TO PROTEST ECONOMIC INEQUALITY. If people are taking off work to protest and not participate in the economy, it is hard to take their words about our financial crisis very seriously.  In order to have any legitimacy on the issue of the economy, you actually need to be participating in the aforementioned economic system.

Besides the issue of taking off work to protest the economy, we run into the issue of how the movement itself was actually run. Again, it is great that so many people felt a connection to the cause and how many people assembled together to get their message across. But talk can only get you so far. It did not propose a strategy that could deal with the very real problems of unemployment, poverty, and household indebtedness that the movement had exposed. They also didn’t have any plans on how to get actual legislation regarding the issues passed. By not having a particular candidate that they were championing or not putting out proposed legislation, it was clear that the movement wasn’t going to get far. Without anything tangible to stand up for, you come off looking like you are complaining.

For example, while the movement could have successfully gotten legislation into congress thanks to the sheer amount of press they received, OWS remained exclusively a movement of opposition. It seemed that everywhere you turned, Occupy Wall Street was making front page news, just for everything but the progress they were making. They became known for being opposed to the rich and the unfair economic system of our country but not known for doing anything progressive to change it. One of their largest flaws, however, illustrates one of their greatest strengths.

Their greatest strength was reaffirming to the public that people have the right to free speech and the right to assemble. It showed the American people that it was possible to have your voices heard, loud and proud. They made headlines and it seemed for a while that Occupy Wall Street was all that people were talking about. Again, while it was a good illustration of our constitutional rights, in order to be successful the movement will have to demand legislation that can prevent rich people from using their wealth to disproportionately shape the rules that govern the economy. If everyone was to engage in similar public displays of dissatisfaction with different parts of our current system, where would that leave us?

In the end, the “movement” turned out to be more like a Public Service Announcement stating that there is a wide gap between the rich and the poor. As effective as Public Service Announcements are in announcing problems, they are not as helpful in actually fixing the problem. It worked to expose the problem to the American people and get people thinking about what to do. Now that it is an issue that is more front and center, it is time to put the campaign to rest. By not drawing out the movement any longer, it will protect its already fading legitimacy and give it a chance to come back later on with a more effective platform that can actually propose tangible change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-mandle/occupys-anniversary_b_1931886.html?utm_hp_ref=occupy-wall-street