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Go Home The Truth About Occupy Wall Street: It’s Much Smaller Than...

POLITICS OCTOBER 15, 2011

The Truth About Occupy Wall Street: It’s Much Smaller Than It Seems

BY WALTER SHAPIRO

New York—With tensions at a fever pitch and TV viewers from Laos to Lapland glued to their sets, the Occupy Wall Street protesters won a last-minute reprieve Friday morning from the Bloomberg administration’s demand that they vacate Zuccotti Park for a clean-up. From viewing fragmentary photos and glancing at the headlines, the uninitiated might imagine that this spot was a pristine green sward before the protests.

Not a chance. Devoid of natural beauty and not surrounded by any obvious symbols of capitalism (unless you count Brooks Brothers), this narrow, block-long open space boasts all the charm of a strip-mall parking lot. The fruit of a real-estate deal that dates back to the troubled era when John Lindsay was mayor and New York was laughingly dubbed “Fun City,” Zuccotti Park is an unlikely setting for anything—let alone the purported rebirth of the American Left.

“The scenery really is a surprise,” said Erin McEwen Wednesday afternoon, as the earnest California community-college student on sabbatical clutched her clean rolled sleeping bag 20 minutes after arriving at the protest site. Moved by an inchoate sense of history being created (“I wanted to see this—it’s a great movement”), McEwen was still trying to take it all in. “I thought it was going to be a grass park,” she said. “Instead, it’s cement.” Matt Smit, a bearded tourist from Auckland, New Zealand, who spent four days camping with the protesters, radiated a similar sense of puzzlement when I spoke with him on Monday: “I was expecting them to be on Wall Street itself.”

Nothing about Occupy Wall Street is what it seems. Sure, the month-long protest has launched more passionate theories than any event since the publication of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. With opinions so polarized, even at The New Republic, the smallest fragment of description can be interpreted like a political manifesto. Nothing riles the demonstrators camping out in Zuccotti Park like the (inaccurate) charge that they are unwashed, shiftless hippies. Instead, after three days of following the protests (and no, that does not make me an expert), I came to a different conclusion. What struck me was the sincere and good-natured smallness of it all.

 

WANDERING PAST POLICE barriers as I walked from Trinity Church to Zuccotti Park on Columbus Day, there was as much energy coming from a four-block-long and totally apolitical street fair as I detected at the protest site. Okay, the revolution will not be won with funnel cakes. Still, a Tuesday afternoon Millionaires March up Park Avenue past the apartment buildings of the likes of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, attracted about 500 mostly middle-aged, union-affiliated demonstrators. And in late Wednesday afternoon’s drizzle, 400 temporary residents of Zuccotti Park tried to march the roughly eight blocks to Wall Street.

How do I convey this respectfully as a veteran of the 1960s? This is not the 1967 Pentagon March or anything like it. Nothing I saw in New York this week justifies the current level of the-whole-world-is-watching media coverage. At times in Zuccotti Park, there seemed to be almost as many reporters (many of them from foreign news outlets) as overnight campers. During the first full week in October, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, one-third of the overall coverage of the economy centered on the Wall Street protests. That seems as wildly out of whack as all those months when only a lonely band wrote about income inequality in America.

The idea of Occupy Wall Street is so much larger than the actual reality at the place of its birth. Maybe less than meets the eye is an enduring theme uniting all 21st century political movements. The Tea Party, after all, was launched with little more than a primal scream on cable TV. These days, the power of social media may be enough to make the virtual real. Danny Schechter, a documentary filmmaker with roots in the 1960s civil-rights and peace movements, marveled Wednesday, “For these kids who are driving this thing, being in The New York Times doesn’t mean shit to them. It’s not their frame of reference.”

The mystery that will launch a thousand media seminars is: How did a modest encampment in Zuccotti Park morph in less than a month into a global news story?

“At the beginning, this protest seemed fairly small,” said Blair Taylor, a 35-year-old, working on his Ph.D. in political science at the New School, who has been visiting Zuccotti Park since the onset of the protest. “Originally, there was a lot of right-wing sentiment—9/11 Truthers and Ron Paul supporters. Now it’s much more left-wing.” That was certainly my impression at Zuccotti Park as I interviewed at random an herbal beverage brewer from North Carolina; a 55-year-old historian of feminist art and magic who lives three blocks away; a sculptor from suburban Westchester County; and an unemployed construction worker from Staten Island who acknowledged, “These problems are going to take years to fix. It won’t happen overnight.” Maybe I would have come up with something different if I had not conspicuously avoided everyone with large, visible tattoos or a manic glint in their eyes.

My very tentative theory about the media success of Occupy Wall Street begins with the cleverness of the initial concept. Even if no one whom I interviewed at the protests had seen anyone even remotely responsible for the economic meltdown, it is easy to imagine that the demonstrators were confronting Goldman Sachs partners and hedge-fund managers daily on their way to work. Occupy Wall Street has a much more dramatic ring than Camp-Out in Lower Manhattan. Another major factor was the way that the normally astute New York Police Department fanned the movement with their indefensible use of pepper spray and their initial penchant for mass arrests. When you are trying to create a mass movement, it is way better to be martyrs than ignored.

The final aspect is that the Occupy Wall Street protests filled in a missing piece in the political puzzle. Mark Schmitt shrewdly suggested that liberals had long been fantasizing about a Tea Party of the left. But I also think serious journalists had been waiting for some bellow of outrage over the way that Wall Street plutocrats had been laughing all the way to their annual bonuses. Why in popular culture is Bernie Madoff a more notorious symbol of greed than AIG or the bankers who packaged sub-prime mortgages? Someone in America had to get mad other than Elizabeth Warren. So when the demonstrators with their amorphous sense of injustice arrived in Zuccotti Park, media stars were born.

Occupy Wall Street is a Rorschach Test. If you are a true believer of the left, you can find something appealing in the well-intentioned and mostly well-behaved efforts of the protesters to call attention to economic injustice. If you are a hard-core conservative, you can mock the demonstrators as easily as you can pillory a vegan food co-op. What happens to this fragile-as-a-soap-bubble movement in the future is impossible to predict. But it is unlikely that the answer will ever be found in Zuccotti Park or the next destination for Occupy Wall Street.

Walter Shapiro is a special correspondent for The New Republic. You can follow him on Twitter @waltershapiroPD.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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69 comments

They certainly don't represent 99 percent of the American People (nor does the Tea Party represents a majority of the people). I doubt they represent 9 percent.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 12:25am

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The majority of the American people are center-right. They reject both Obama's socialism (which is really a kind of crony capitalism combined with government handouts to buy votes), and the libertarianism of some of the further reaches of the Tea Party. The majority believes in family, hard work and individual responsibility but understands the need for a government safety net (which is not the same as a welfare state). A good centrist platform would call for breaking up the big banks so that there is an end to "too big to fail". Welfare reform should start at the top. Bring back Glass-Steagall. Beyond that, we need to return power to the states. Abolish the federal Department of Education, which has spent trillions of dollars without showing any improvements in outcomes.

- bulbman1066

October 15, 2011 at 1:06am

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Walter, with all due respect, you just don't get it. Stop looking at this through the nostalgic lens of the 1960s, when tens or hundreds of thousand of folks had to be out on the street to touch a nerve. I suspect that bulbman and I would disagree on many matters, but we seem to both see breaking up the big banks is a good and even necessary move. And that's how Occupy Wall Street resonates beyond the relative handful of protestors there. People across the political spectrum are aware of how a handful of companies have wrought harm, walked away untouched, and are likely to more severely damage the global financial system evemtually. Whether something comes of this in the near future, and whether we need another financial meltdown (as horrible as it would be) for more folks to finally act on their resentment of Wall St., this OWS might be the start of, sooner or later, something big.

- Thunderroad

October 15, 2011 at 1:58am

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Funny, today I had a Sukkot meal with an Australian-Israeli who returned to Melbourne from New York just this week. He visited the OWS encampment, and his impression was that it was bigger than he thought it was going to be. I guess size is in the eye of the beholder.

- AaronW

October 15, 2011 at 5:26am

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It's not just size, it's representation. The OWS don't seem to represent most of the people. Sure everyone including myself agrees with a few of their demands but as a group their spokespeople speak in hopeless abstraction. More importantly they are not aligning themselves with either Democrats or Unions. This is a salient difference between OWS and the Teat Party. The latter group quickly identified themselves with and worked within the right wing Republican party. This is why the TP has had more success politically than the OWS so far. I hope this changes. By wanting to stay outside politics, stay pure as it were, they won't accomplish much beyond some headlines in the news. The latest news was about their cleaning up the park they're staying in. Wonderful. Hew is a possible headline about that" "NEWS FLASH: OWS IS TOILET TRAINED."

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 8:31am

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You can always trust Europeans to go a bridge too far: "Protesters in Europe March Against Corporate Greed" "LONDON (AP) — Protestors are marching in European cities to demonstrate against corporate greed and inequality." My favorite protest signs: "Hundreds marched through the Bosnian city of Sarajevo carrying pictures of Che Guevara and old communist flags that read "Death to capitalism, freedom to the people."" Notice it says, "freedom to the people," not "freedom for people," meaning individuals. The people is a euphemism for "Party," or at least for collective groups.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 8:57am

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I've been there a couple of times, too. First, Zuccoti Park is not a park by any American definition. I guess it's kind of like a car park. Which is one of the points, actually. It was built to compensate for the imposition to the neighborhood of huge skyscrapers that reduced the sense of community and a not-quite-park park is contemporary American capitalism's gesture at "giving back" to the neighborhood. Second, it's simply not true that America is centre-right. THAT HAS NO MEANING. It is a tautology to say the centre of American political views is the centre. To the extent that there is a rightward skew, it is found in some social moral issues. At least in the wider population, it is evened out by centre-left positions on various functions of government. (There's a reason Tea Partiers like their SS and Medicare.) Third, Zuccoti Park is small. If I were OWS, I would have my protests in Foley Square, a large government plaza surrounded by the New York Supreme Court, a Federal District Courthouse, and several city government buildings. (This is where they marched to and occupied with organized labour ten days ago.) But in order to have an "occupy" style protest, you need a protest vanguard that is willing to brave the elements (one week it rained every day and two days ago was a wicked thunderstorm throughout the night). So it's actually good that the protest is permanently in a smaller area. If they couldn't fill up a larger area, it would look kind of problematic. But they should still think about going to Foley Square if people with sleeping bags want to join them, so they look more formidable.

- chaitless

October 15, 2011 at 10:33am

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"Wikileaks founder Julian Assange addressed protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral" Assange, he is bound to make the movement, credible, don't you think? Assange, Zizek, Michael Moore, who is next, Chavez?

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 12:09pm

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"The latter group quickly identified themselves with and worked within the right wing Republican party. This is why the TP has had more success politically than the OWS so far." No, the TP has its share of criticism for the right. Remember the TP started as a Ron Paul group. The TP's unifying success has been fiscal responsibility. They generally hated tarp and the bail outs. Most believe their current taxes are fair. What they detest is this tight, intertwined cronyism between the gov elite and the biz elite. In the beginning there was a lot of dislike for the Federal Reserve, too.

- seattleeng

October 15, 2011 at 1:46pm

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I've been down there checking out OWS and I agree on the Foley Square idea chaitless - but I doubt Ray Kelly would have any patience for that. There are alot of important counter-terrorism operations there. The Commish is all business on that front and we New Yorkers deeply appreciate him for that. He's the best in the biz. The NYPD has made some doozer mistakes so far, but they've also tried to correct themselves and I got the impression from talking to people that the effort is noticed. There will be flair ups, but there are always a few bad cops and some nitiwts just really want to get arrested. But both those groups are on the margins. I went down there with three families with kids, professionals in our 40's. Saw a bunch of people like us too. Most of us thought that skeptics actually help tighten the thinking and will ultimate help.

- WandreyCer

October 15, 2011 at 1:54pm

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seattleeng "The TP's unifying success has been fiscal responsibility." You say fiscal responsibility, I say cuts in federal spending on important social programs like unemployment insurance. In any case, my point was and is that the TP has been more successful because they are working with and within a major political party while the OWS group has refused to do so. They want succeed until they join forces with Democrats and above all labor Unions.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 3:17pm

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Camping out may be fun but it won't pass legislation to re-regulate Wall Street and it won't stop Republican filibustering of job bills.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 3:19pm

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"Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across the globe Saturday to denounce bankers, politicians and businessmen for ruining the world's economies, with violence breaking out in Rome as angry protestors torched cars and smashed bank windows." If this happens here the the OWS group will lose whatever support they have: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/15/us-protests-idUSTRE79E0FC20111015

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 3:23pm

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Seattle, if the TP is against bailouts, crony capitalism, can you help us understand why the people they send to Washington don't mirror them? You might say both parties are in the pockets of corporations, but I think the republicans are in deeper.

- NR409654

October 15, 2011 at 3:30pm

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You guys are wrong about this. Check the news this morning. People around the world identify with the anger people are feeling, and finally the awareness of the fact that we've turned into a plutocracy. The numbers on the streets may be small. The numbers of people who are starting to get the picture are huge.

- Sophia

October 15, 2011 at 3:45pm

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Sophia "People around the world identify with the anger people are feeling, and finally the awareness of the fact that we've turned into a plutocracy." Who is "we" Sophia? And people around the world meaning Europe don't vote n the US. They will also be more prone to turn to violence and support antidemocratic remedies.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 5:00pm

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The vast majority of the protestors are peaceful, ut that doesn't suit the needs of the cynics, the frightened lackeys of the oligarchs or the sensation hungry press. The protestors themselves drove out the "anarchists" causing so much violence in Rome. The press and those heavily invested in seeing the worst in this will do what they always do - jerk those knees, find the extreme. And Sophia - the numbers are not all that small, tens of thousands in Germany. I have a friend in Spain right now, he said six thousand in Madrid, which is not a big city. Either way, it doesn't matter what any of us think. It's much bigger than any us here on TNR.

- WandreyCer

October 15, 2011 at 5:02pm

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"The vast majority of the protestors are peaceful..." It's the demonstrators willing to use violence who end up leading anti-establishment movements. Numbers have nothing to do with it.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 5:24pm

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When Larry Kramer started ACT UP in the early 80's everyone said "oh dear oh dear oh dear, mustn't scare the estalishment with a bunch of sick, angry homosexuals out there in front of the cameras! Won't the establishment wince? Won't the spectacle just hold us back? Best to just try to work within the system, best to just do what they say. Just let the doctors speak at hearings, please don't." Meanwhile, people were dying like flies and numbers were doubling every six months. So hordes of enraged gay men and their supporters, and traumatized people like me fighting the plague on the front lines - set to the streets. We had much MUCH less support and crediblity than the protesters out there today. We were loathed, things thrown at us, had the fascist bible thumpers after us. I marched with a bunch of nurses, nuns and pissed off gay men at the 1988 convention and supposedly good, liberal people looked away. We couldn't get a camera on us to save our lives unless we pushed the biggest drag queeens we could find to the front. By the time the Republican convention came around that year - well what do ya know? There was a woman with AIDS who spoke - a politically correct speaker, a soccer Mom with AIDS - no gay men, as if (they were all in the audience with their Moral Majority signs, but I digress). She pleaded for tolerance and funding to stop the plague, bless her. She got a standing ovation, even by the bible thumpers. She died soon after. Within two years, the entire dialouge regarding AIDS changed - funding changed, everything changed. It's not perfect, but it's not 1982 with people in power arrogantly ignoring a growing plague and people of all walks of life dropping like flies. What we have today is exactly what a successful movement for change looks like - when the people in power won't listen, you have to MAKE THEM LISTEN. You certainly don't listen to the nervous Nellie's worried about looking bad. If you're in the streets, it's obviously way past that.

- WandreyCer

October 15, 2011 at 5:48pm

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What a dumb analogy. AIDS was a little understood disease not man made and little understood. Like most medical researches would have worked on it with or without the marches and protests. Believing that that angry protests would lead to a cure for disease is like believing in voodoo. It makes people susceptible to the disease feel better but it doesn't produce cures. People have been angry about cancer I (and other diseases) but we still have to live with it.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 6:02pm

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arnon, your points are well-taken, but what you're saying essentially boils down to obvious truth that the politics of protest and the politics of legislation are two different things. Yes, we know that. And yes, we also know that unless Occupy increases in size and unless it embraces elements such as unions and the left wing of the Democratic Party, it likely will fizzle out and have little effect on American electoral/governmental politics. But you seem to be saying that because OWS has started small (What political organization doesn't start small and grow?) and because its relationship to existing entities on the left is a bit vague (Seems to me, though, OWS has been quite happy to have the support of unions) it should be ignored. Strikes me as bad advice. As for the Tea Party/GOP analogy, I'm not sure it applies. The GOP had a substantial right-wing already elected. In fact, after the 2006 mid-terms the GOP right accounted for the majority of its officials in office. The situation on the Democratic side is by no means similar. It is not clear that there exists, if not within the Democratic Party as a whole but within the group of Democrats elected to federal office a very large number disposed to OWS. And maybe that's part of OWS's point: that the Democratic Party needs to change.

- AaronW

October 15, 2011 at 6:06pm

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“But you seem to be saying that because OWS has started small (What political organization doesn't start small and grow?) and because its relationship to existing entities on the left is a bit vague (Seems to me, though, OWS has been quite happy to have the support of unions) it should be ignored. Strikes me as bad advice.” “Seem” is right because I a not saying that at all. I am pointing out tow things: the politicvs of protest are an important component of the political process but not a sufficient one. All too often leftists tend to be satisfied with “raising consciousness” and with unrealizable ideal programs that don’t lead anywhere. This in part is what happened during the Vietnam protests. This is also why after the Vietnam war ended people stopped paying attention to the protesters. I am also concerned about violence which will kill the protest movement before it starts. So far it hasn’t happened here and I hope it won’t. That it is happening in Europe doesn’t surprise me at all. They have a different more violent history of leftist violence going back to before the Paris commune in the 19 when tens of thousands of people were killed. “The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante can never be established for certain, and estimates vary from about 10,000 to 50,000. According to Benedict Anderson, "7,500 were jailed or deported" and "roughly 20,000 executed".[7]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune#La_Semaine_Sanglante (There is a history of violence here also but it’s not on the same scale.) To me success would entail working on legislative demands and demonstrating in support of those demands. Jobs, financial regulatory reform, a less regressive and less confusing tax system (what we have today baffles even CPA’s), financing the health reform bill. If even have of demands like these were achieved we would be ahead both socially and politically. So far I have seen signs that read "racial and economic justice" and other abstract slogans. These kinds of demands will make some social workers feel better but it won't lead to anything practical.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 6:39pm

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To me also, Aaron, the most progressive thing people could demonstrate for would be to counter the right wing assault on the New Deal. We need both to protect and defend what is left of the new deal and to renew it by completing its promise.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 7:14pm

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Well, arnon, then it seems to me you're just talking to hear yourself talk. If your only criticism of OWS is that it hasn't yet emerged as a force that can effect real political change, that would seem to be nothing more than a statement of the obvious. Is the fact that OWS might not ever produce anything withwhile a reason to reject it now? Yes consciousness-raising is insufficient, but it's also a point of departure.

- AaronW

October 15, 2011 at 7:20pm

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well, Aaron I write to counter arguments that ask us to embrace an inchoate movement that doesn't itself know what it is after. So far all I have been hearing are abstract feel good slogans. (some even think that the campers will cure AIDS.) When they actually start coming up with real demands then I will know if it's worthwhile to "embrace" it or not. You are of course free to join the marching, excuse me, the camping enthusiasts.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 7:33pm

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You're such a mean spirited, hateful asshole arnon.

- WandreyCer

October 15, 2011 at 7:36pm

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But the more important point about you arnon in that you are utterly useless - no one said protesing would cure an ilness, what a stupid ignorant statement. I am embarrassed for you, yet again, kvetching to kvetch, to congratulate yourself on your boring cyncism. You know nothing!

- WandreyCer

October 15, 2011 at 7:41pm

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It is not "Wall Street" that destroyed the economy. At least focus on the few companies who pushed all the toxic CDOs, of which Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are the main survivors. JPMorganChase behaved responsibly, and most of the companies traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ had nothing to do with the meltdown - although those companies continue to be held hostage to the double-digit earnings increase paradigm that puts profits above all stakeholders except shareholders. Consumers and employees are the stakeholders who lose out with that unrelenting paradigm. OWS should be occupying Greenwich, CT where more of the private equity and hedge funds are now located. THAT would be fun! Two observations on OWS: 1) what happened to Obama's original campaign promise that is currently called Organizing for America? I never saw any real effort to actually mobilize the thousands of geographic Groups into the original promise of "change happens from the bottom up". Instead, all those Groups were just fluff in what was, and still is, solely a fundraising machine. There was never any way to communicate with anyone about any idea. Three of us started a Group for Obama's Cabinet, and one of us even started a separate website where people could nominate potential cabinet members and vote. We were sincere, but the campaign ignored even that small effort at input. 2) I do not think camping out overnight is a good idea. Tahrir Square wound up destroying the Egyptian economy. I know that our elected officials do not listen to any of us - I never get answers when I write about specific issues or legislation. Just like the student strike of spring 1970 to protest Nixon's bombing of Cambodia accomplished nothing except the Dems nominated McGovern and Nixon won re-election in a landslide. sorry, I am kind of repulsed by the public health issues of this camp-in, although glad to learn that Zucotti Park is concrete and no grass is being destroyed by pee. Keep wondering if NYC will have another bed-bug epidemic, or worse.

- K2K

October 15, 2011 at 7:51pm

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WandreyCer “You're such a mean spirited, hateful asshole arnon…..But the more important point about you arnon in that you are utterly useless…” Wandrey is a wonder of goodness and charity as the above comments show.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 8:07pm

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Wandrey believes in the fascist myth that young healthy productive people are for progress and justice. She is ready like the good little Nazi she is to exterminate old useless man.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 8:16pm

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K2K “It is not "Wall Street" that destroyed the economy…. OWS should be occupying Greenwich, CT where more of the private equity and hedge funds are now located. THAT would be fun!” Well, Wall Street in the age of the internet is not a concrete location any more. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20110316/REAL_ESTATE/110319905 Only a few financial firms wish to stay there because of the stock exchange. I could see many more firms go to other locations including the stock exchange if working there becomes a hassle.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 8:17pm

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Maybe I'm misunderstanding your analogy, arnon, but I always thought the "semaine saglante" was the week in which the French Army, having had its collective ass handed to it by the Germans in the recent Franco-Prussian War, recouped its honor by imprisoning and murdering thousands of Parisian working-class people, many of whom had not been Communards at all, and certainly not activists.

- ironyroad

October 15, 2011 at 9:13pm

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I wasn't proposing an analogy. Yes, Ironyroad, you misunderstood what i was saying.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 9:34pm

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small is beautiful

- tivra

October 15, 2011 at 9:34pm

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Here we finally have a progressive-left protest against one of the most obvious problems in the United States (i.e. financial malfeasance), and NR demurs. Unregulated financial speculation has been a disaster for the country for at least 30 years, but when "uneducated" or "intuitive" protesters appear, your response is an elitist sneer: "They don't understand that liberals are capitalists!" What crap!

- phope

October 15, 2011 at 9:50pm

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It seems to me, arnon, that it is you who doesn't understand what he's saying. You suggest first that violence could kill the movement, and cite recent outbreaks of violence by leftist protesters in Europe as an example. Then as evidence of Europe's long tradition of "leftist violence" you cite the semaigne seglante which, as irony pointed out, is a better example of reactionary violence than leftist violence. So what's your point? That if OWS turned into a riot it would turn people off? Okay, sure. That seems so obvious as to go without saying. Never mind that there are zero signs of riotous intentions on the part of the protesters. Or is your point that if the NYPD went all Kent State on the protesters that would be bad for the movement? As unlikely as such an event seems--and I think it highly unlikely--it is hard for me to imagine how a violent crack-down would not lead to an increase in support.

- AaronW

October 15, 2011 at 9:56pm

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AaronW as usual you restate what was said without grasping its meaning. I'll make it easy for you: I said that in the US a turn to violence usually leads to a loss of support by the electorate. (True for both right and left.) I then said that this doesn't seem to be true for Europe where there is a long tradition of violence in politics. I cited the Paris commune as an example of large scale violence. That is all I said. No analogies. Now, I brought it up because on the first day of demonstrations there was already violence in a number of European cities.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 10:05pm

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As for the Paris commune, read G Flaubert's Sentimental Education if you want a minute description of the violence there. Every side perpetrated violence there.

- arnon

October 15, 2011 at 10:15pm

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Arnon, I was just thinking of Sentimental Education as I contemplate the news. The other book I am recalling is Jack London's Martin Eden, which I read when I was very young, and dramatizes an interesting division between an independent, rugged individualist spirit, and a socially conscious proletarian spirit, a division which I suspect racked London.

- skahn

October 15, 2011 at 11:45pm

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Yes, SK, London was a complicated man: socialist and Nietzschean. He was too much of an intellectual seeker to have stayed with one sets of beliefs, though.

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 12:10am

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arnon, then I don't understand what your point was. If you're using that particular example, it's difficult to see how it works in any connection (not necessarily a direct analogy) to the OWS phenomenon, if you say it's not a parallel in any way. If you mean a general assertion about the dangers of political violence, then yes, of course, the French history has had more open and unrestrained confrontations between classes and between state and insurgent citizenry than the U.S. has had, or the UK. So had Germany after WW1. But again, is there any likelihood that the OWS will take power in New York after a major military defeat of the U.S. armed forces, which will be then move in to crush the 2011-style communards in a bloody counter-attack that begins in Battery Park and moves inexorably northward . . . ? I think it's unlikely.

- ironyroad

October 16, 2011 at 4:11am

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So, arnon, in response to the question "What's your point?" you answer that your point was merely to state the obvious fact that Americans take a dim view of political violence. Nothing to do with Occupy Wall Street, you say. All right. But then why bring up political violence in a thread about Occupy Wall Street?

- AaronW

October 16, 2011 at 4:52am

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The heart of the "malfeasance" bears repeating what I wrote 12 hours ago: most of the companies traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ had nothing to do with the meltdown - although those companies continue to be held hostage to the double-digit earnings increase paradigm that puts profits above all stakeholders except shareholders. Consumers and employees are the stakeholders who lose out with that unrelenting paradigm. IT is the quest for double-digit earnings/ROI even when we had low inflation that drove "Wall Street" into so much reckless endangerment. anyway, the only outcome I see for sure is that NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly probably now WILL run for Mayor, and win. The entire economy of New York State depends on Wall Street and all the NYC and NYS taxes levied on those employees. Plus, OWS may be worse for NYC tourism than Mayor Bloomberg's ban on smoking.

- K2K

October 16, 2011 at 7:45am

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Occupy Everywhere was quite large yesterday. Beyond ignoring. At this point, it needs organization to keep people plugged in and productive in the movement. To that end, the organization of local meetings that the Tea Party vanguard did would be helpful. Also, K2K, what the heck are you talking about? Do you even follow New York politics? The City Council speaker, Chrstine Quinn, is definitely preparing to run. She was actually one of the major players in keeping the protests in Zuccotti Park from being "cleaned up" on Friday. Weiner would have run, but obviously won't. John Liu, the comptroller, might also run. The Times had a big corruption story on him last week, so they're obviously treating him as mayor material. The police commissioner running for office doesn't make any sense. People like the NYPD and NYFD, but they don't want to be governed by them. (You must be getting this idea from "Blue Bloods", which is quite a fictional show.)

- chaitless

October 16, 2011 at 8:09am

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Sadly, I detect a whiff of cynicism with Walter Shapiro's article, so along with the dire need for stricter regulations we should also consider self-regulating this type of storytelling?

- NR111368

October 16, 2011 at 8:21am

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"anyway, the only outcome I see for sure is that NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly probably now WILL run for Mayor, and win." I don't know of any NY City police commissioner since Teddy Roosevelt who ran for Mayor, do you?

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 9:26am

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"Sadly, I detect a whiff of cynicism with Walter Shapiro's article...." Where is the cynicism?

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 9:27am

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bulbman, It would be nice if you folks on the Right actually knew the definition of "socialism," a word you reflexively use in conjunction with Obama's name. "Socialism" is when the government owns all of the means of production. It's in the dictionary. Name even one industry that has been nationalized by the Obama administration. Look up the word "socialism" in the dictionary.

- magboy47.

October 16, 2011 at 1:06pm

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Contrary to what many comments here suggest, OWS disdain for politics is its one saving grace. The more OWS holds out on this issue, the more the Democratic Party will be forced to shift to the left to smother the sentiment. If OWS allows itself to be co-opted by the DP, you will hear a few "I feel your pain" platitudes and then the message and moment will be lost as the DP gallops back to the right to capture some imaginary center.

- cansv

October 16, 2011 at 2:15pm

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Well arnon, I see your tendency towards projection is stronger than ever. Yes, you are useless arnon, but your impotent attempts at bullying, your clumsy irrelvant analogies and your embarassing inability to comprehend much of anything going on with OWS - just makes me laugh.

- WandreyCer

October 16, 2011 at 3:20pm

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Wandrey why don't you just wander away, you old nazi. (Notice I called you a nazi with a small n which is to say you are one of those creeps who would use Nazi means to some 'just" end that you dreamed up all by yourself. ) No, I am not projecting. ( I am not the one who would like to exterminate (old useless man.) You on the other hand are incapable of owning up to your real intentions.

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 5:10pm

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I wish you two would stop. It's really childish. Wandrey isn't looking to socially engineer the future via a Soviet-style reign of terror and arnon has, despite a peculiar reference to the Paris Commune, some reasonable questions to ask regarding the real meaning and direction of the OWS protests.

- ironyroad

October 16, 2011 at 5:39pm

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"Wandrey isn't looking to socially engineer the future via a Soviet-style reign of terror..." No, she is looking for love and justice. Here is an example: WandreyCer "You're such a mean spirited, hateful asshole arnon." 10/15/2011 - 7:41pm EDT | WandreyCer "But the more important point about you arnon in that you are utterly useless..."

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 6:57pm

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Whoa. You guys are shocking me, truly! Wandrey understands why protests are important, people have to make the powerful understand our situation and sometimes publicize issues that are being ignored, such as AIDs, the impact of joblessness and the dramatic skewing of wealth. Arnon is generally astute so I'm confused. There's no call for violence in any of this, even Eric The S****** Cantor has backed off his use of the term "mob." The Constitution itself respects the right of free assembly. TNR, this article is small-minded and offbase. What gives? Plus it's started a most unseemly foodfight, which I hope will now end in mutual apologies!

- Sophia

October 16, 2011 at 7:36pm

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One shouldn't confuse sudden interpersonal animosity with political ideas. Often two people who broadly agree on basics can get trapped in a mounting exchange of hostility on essentially contingent matters. Par example, moi and vous with regarde to la histoire des communards du Paris.

- ironyroad

October 16, 2011 at 7:41pm

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ironyroad "One shouldn't confuse sudden interpersonal animosity with political ideas." People who preach love and justice have no business indulging in personal animosity.

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 9:23pm

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Sophia "Arnon is generally astute so I'm confused." The demonstrators need to come up with a short practical agenda such as" save what is left of the New Deal from right wings desire to dismantle it completely. Or they can ask for a renewal of The New Deal. Or some other demand like jobs, health care implementation, more rigorous regulation of Banks, etc. Just sitting there warbling about love and justice will get tiring and through their dilatoriness will lose whatever good will and support they still have.

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 9:31pm

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Rich people are bad. That's why we need to overthrow our liberal capitalist democracy and emulate Lenin or Castro or the Ayatollah Khomeini. There seem to be two parties on the American far left: the neo-Marxists and the Islamophiliacs. Both factions do agree on one point: Jews are bad and Israel should be destroyed. So maybe there is hope for unity among the Occupy Wall Street crowd. There are some details to be ironed out, for example how to reconcile the radical feminism in which the Left supposedly supposedly believes with the Islamic belief that women are property and not fully human. But even contradictions on that scale can be bridged by the combination of ignorance, ingratitude, and hypocrisy that defines the American far Left.

- bulbman1066

October 16, 2011 at 11:20pm

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Another memorable moment as bulbman lands on the parapet, clears his throat, harangues the crowd for a minute about something utterly irrelevant to what's actually going on, and then waggles his wings and flies off again.

- ironyroad

October 16, 2011 at 11:42pm

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Interesting article in the Chronicle about OWS: http://chronicle.com/article/Intellectual-Roots-of-Wall/129428/ "Intellectual Roots of Wall St. Protest Lie in Academe" Movement's principles arise from scholarship on anarchy

- arnon

October 16, 2011 at 11:50pm

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following up to two comments about my "anyway, the only outcome I see for sure is that NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly probably now WILL run for Mayor, and win." I scan the metro news, and sometimes dig deeper with Celeste Katz's Daily News politics blog since the NYDN and Post are aware that the vast majority of NYC voters are in the other four boroughs, like me. Yeah, good luck Christine! maybe you can find a job with that other former rising star, Gifford Miller. Maybe a Ray Kelly run was someone's wishful thinking, but I read that one after Weiner disappeared. If OCW gets out of hand, then I guess you youngsters (?) do not remember why Giuliani beat Dinkins. If I had known that NYC was EVER going to get a mayor who would stop the terror of the streets and subways from the 1970's and worse in the 1980's, I would never have moved out one year after they arrested the kids who, at the time, were blamed for the Central Park Jogger attack - and that arrest was in front of my bulding on West 100th Street. I was reverse commuting to NJ and no one ever wanted to live on W 100th Street, so I figured I could always move back. Who knew? If you are that young, watch the film "The Brave One", which captured those bad old days in the present, but that bodega was MY bodega, and Jodie Foster's character's home was four blocks north of mine. And, that really was what it was like, except that bodega was actually safe because well, a story not to be repeated here. Scott Stringer has a better shot than Christine Quinn for the dem nomination, but that does not mean that Ray Kelly can not win. and, I assume "Blue Bloods" got the idea from the article I read about Kelly a few months ago. Bad enough Manhattan has turned into Disneyland without cigarette smokers - keeping the crime under control is what makes NYC work.

- K2K

October 17, 2011 at 1:37am

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Ironyroad, if you don't know that American radicalism is infected with anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism then it's you who doesn't have a clue as to what is going on.

- bulbman1066

October 17, 2011 at 2:41am

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What is anti-american or antisemitic about protesting the behavior of the financial center that wrecked the economy in an insane drive for profits and a complete lack of interest in the potential consequences for others? It's Americans that are actually suffering now, you know, in case you hadn't noticed.

- ironyroad

October 17, 2011 at 12:45pm

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K2K says: "It is not "Wall Street" that destroyed the economy. At least focus on the few companies who pushed all the toxic CDOs, of which Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are the main survivors." K2K...think of "Wall Street" as a symbolic image for the current OWS protests regarding the broken nature of our free market system like those on the right use "Big Government" to encompass all that they think is wrong with American governance. Somehow "Occupy CityGroup" doesn't ring like a call to bring your placards, bread boards and picket signs to the protest.

- singlspeed

October 17, 2011 at 3:46pm

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bulbman: You keep referencing "Obama's socialism." I've repeatedly asked for examples. Could you please provide an exhaustive list? If not, perhaps you should reconsider using the term. Is it his health care law which is based on what Republicans offered in response to the Clinton plan, is more conservative that what Nixon put forward, and had the support of those "socialist" former Senate Repubican leaders Bob Dole and Bill Frist? Is it his proposal to allow upper end tax rates return to where they were under the "socialist" Bill Clinton? Was it his "socialist" support for the banks while refusing to nationalize them (as many liberals were urging) that essentially saved capitalism? Is it the "socialist" return of the auto industry to private ownership? I await your response--again.

- dsimon

October 17, 2011 at 9:13pm

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LOL. This made my day, by ironyroad: "Another memorable moment as bulbman lands on the parapet, clears his throat, harangues the crowd for a minute about something utterly irrelevant to what's actually going on, and then waggles his wings and flies off again." Why can't I write like that.

- Sophia

October 18, 2011 at 2:40am

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Anyway, Arnon, you are correct, it takes more than a protest to change things. But, people haven't even been heard until now, we've just been forcefed either the far right wing view of things or the false equivalence view of things, and now finally somebody is saying no mas! From this maybe some politicians will listen, some business people will listen, and make some concrete and rational progress, and stop shining us on with total bs, such as trying to dismantle environmental protections and accusing Obama of being A Kenyan AntiColonialist, as if that has anything to do with anything. I think it's important that the right wing gets a grip. And this includes the Blue Dog Dems, also though the media. C'mon guys, "Congress" didn't refuse to pass the Jobs Bill.

- Sophia

October 18, 2011 at 2:44am

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Some of the rage against banks has taken an antisemitic turn. That's a fact. I'm seeing false quotations from "Thomas Jefferson" circulating on Facebook - WORSE, far worse - HENRY FORD and his ridiculous ideas are floating around, complete with links to neonazi or old Nazi or Middle Eastern Nazi pictures and websites. People know nothing about Henry Ford, they just think he was a Great American Industrialist; many really don't mean to promulgate bigotry but they aren't well educated. And it's also a fact that an alarming number of my fellow leftists are antisemitic and of course many on the Right. This is a real problem and it worries me. People who've made innocent mistakes do research, are suitably aghast and remove their Henry Ford posts; others though are planting them on purpose complete with spider web cartoons, references to the Rothschilds, swastikas superimposed on the Star of David and lies about Israel.

- Sophia

October 18, 2011 at 2:49am

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Sophia -- sometimes I get a creative lucky break. The name "Bulbman" just sounds like a character in an outfit with wings who has strange and potentially beneficial powers but uses them instead to get on everyone's nerves. You have a fluid turn of phrase yourself, a lot of the time.

- ironyroad

October 18, 2011 at 9:15pm

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