Distrust the mainstream media’s narrative about Occupy Wall Street
Framing the OWS protests as being about demands plays right into the hands of the elite:
I’m fascinated by how many political operatives seem keen to tell the participants in OccupyWallStreet that they are doing lots of things wrong, and really should shape up and follow traditional lines, like issuing demands and seeking to apply pressure in more conventional ways. Given that the movement is getting lots of free and mainly favorable PR and is mushrooming all over the US, there does not seem to be a lot of empirical support for this view.
As numerous readers have pointed out, and the folks in Zuccotti Park recognize all too well, using those strategies now would play into the hands of the existing power structure. Per Richard Kline:
What I found disconcerting about the media’s quest to find the demands motivating the Occupiers was just that single word, ‘demands.’ That together with the rapidity of the media’s insistence that there must be demands. By itself it said everything about the media strategy anti-occupation while also ignoring the substantive statements of individuals at the occupations and the process of the occupations. ‘Demands’ are what disgruntled extremists ‘agitate’ for, in common, anti-popular media presentation of the last twenty years. Demands for ‘special’ pay; demands for ‘special’ treatment. Demands for ‘scapegoats’ to be dragged expensively into court. Demands for ‘acknowledgment’ from the politicos ‘at the top.’ You know: labor ‘demands,’ and all that stuff. The point was/is if demands can be elicited, than those in the occupation _must_ be agitators, which means that they must be malcontents, which means that they must be ‘unrepresentative,’ which means that they must be selfish interests; bums looking for handouts and blood, because that’s who the media presents as having ‘demands’ rather than ‘negotiating’ stances, or operational ‘missions’ like Serious People.
What the occupiers have had are questions. “Why aren’t there indictments for fraud and worse?” “Why are we firing nurses and teachers when corporate profits will hit a RECORD this year?” “Why to the richest pay no tax while state and local governments are crushed with debt?” “Why does the Beltway do absolutely nothing about employment?” “Why have student grants disappeared to be replaced by predatory loans without which we cannot get the education employers and the System demand from us?” These questions may _become_ demands, but they aren’t, yet. They, and most of the rest of us 99%, would realy like to have answers. But the media have done everything possible to exclude questions of this kind, to push them to small, late, interior paragraphs in turgid pabalum articles and to exclude them from the broadcast media altogether.
The most visible controversy has surrounded “what do these people want?” As we’ve argued, “We are the 99%” more than suffices as a high level answer. It is a VERY powerful message. It says “We don’t need to negotiate. This is our country and we want it back from the top 1% which has been selling us out.” The 1% know damned well what the 99% want, which is a more just society.
(Source: nakedcapitalism.com)
