Occupy Wall Street is leaderless and disunified, and that’s its strength.

(Despite the post date, most of this was written shortly after the Brooklyn Bridge arrests.)

I didn’t understand what Occupy Wall Street was about these last couple weeks.  I watched the mainstream media coverage of it and ignorantly, I wrote it off as a flash-mob.  Then I heard about the 700 marchers arrested on Brooklyn Bridge.  Things didn’t add up.  A flash mob doesn’t stick around for weeks and then get themselves arrested.  A flash mob doesn’t rapidly spread to other cities.

The Occupy movement is more than a protest

So I read a little more about Occupy Wall Street and I went to see it myself.  I think I understand it a little better now.  First of all, I think it’s more than a protest.  The movement is not just a sit-in, it’s a forum to design and inspire action.  Occupiers are not just making demands – they are taking initiative to address issues themselves, albeit with a very humble start.   Starting with a blank slate, the occupiers have formed a newspaper, raised thousands of dollars, and reached an audience of millions with their message.  Their movement is spreading rapidly into other cities across the world.  As some in the media have pointed out, this is not a passing fad.  I see this as the beginning of an organically growing grassroots think-tank that designs itself as it goes along.  The ambition of such a movement is an easy target for many to chide.  But guess what, the movement has already achieved their goal of raising awareness.  The occupiers demanded that we listen and question ourselves, and here we are doing that.

The absence of a unified voice is the movement’s strength.

The movement has been criticized for lacking a unified voice or a list of demands.  But people don’t understand that the movement has rejected those things intentionally.  The lack of a unified public voice is what gives this early movement its strength.  Let’s first understand why the movement lacks a unified voice, and then consider why it is a strength.  First of all, the movement is open to anyone who walks into the public square.  It really is comprised of a diverse group of people voicing opinions – even if that diversity is not perfectly balanced (as many are eager to point out).  Without amplified sound, the general assembly meetings are raw, moderated only by the conventions of hand signals offering feedback from the crowd.  As you can imagine, these circumstances result in myriad voices and opinions that are difficult to unify.  But why is that a bad thing?  How are these general assemblies anything but poetic microcosms of democracy?  Sure, you can put an onus on them to eventually distil their discussions into action, but it looks to me like they’re well on their way.  And it seems that their slowness has only gathered them more momentum.

The movement doesn’t give the media a box to put them in.

It is the media’s delusion that the movement needs to have a representative leader with talking points ready for their immediate news cycles.  The movement doesn’t need the media and it certainly doesn’t need to fit into the media’s short format templates.  They have their own media of social networks and blogs.  They are patient and smart.  If they elected a leader, he or she would likely be examined for petty flaws and buried in a drama of controversy faster than they could elect a new one.  If they made a list of demands the pundits would pick them apart faster than the assembly could defend them.  By withholding these things from the media as they develop in these early days, the movement controls the pace and scope of their own discussion and development.  This is a generation raised on social media and guerrilla marketing – they know how to spread their message across the internet with nothing but amateur documenters and a little inspiration.

A patient message explained through stories and conversations.

The young generation driving this movement is starkly different from the hopelessly plugged in caricatures they are often made out to be.  They are not lost addicts of a fast pace digital world.  On the contrary, they have abandoned the packaged sound bytes of traditional media in favor of internet communities where they can explore new mediums and think for themselves.  I find this very heartening.   Beyond the “99%” slogans,  their deeper messages are not spread with punchy headlines but through a collage of stories – interviews, videos, essays, and artful info-graphics.  If you haven’t explored some of these ‘indie-platform’ stories – check them out.  Take a scroll down some of the quieter alleys of the internet – there are some pleasant little communities to see.  Here’s one video I found made by a local filmmaker.

 

Delivered digitally, but crafted traditionally

The movement is brought to you by the internet, but the resulting demonstrations are decidedly analog.  They are grounded only in transient encampments, conversation and cardboard signs.  The movement has charmed and baffled us with its vast digital reach despite such tenuous physical roots.  I think it has been so successful because this condition leaves the movement inclusive and malleable – easy to appropriate and fit to any community’s message.  Everyone can find at least some truth in the occupiers’ messages:  the economy is broken and we feel helpless because no one knows what to do about it.

Helping our leaders say what we are afraid to hear

It’s compelling to watch a mass of people step outside our daily condition to shout something we have willfully ignored – or at least downplayed.  In this sense, the movement is not just a critic but like a court jester to help us ridicule ourselves – to say things we can’t normally take the time to hear.  Like the classic jester, the movement gives our leaders an important character to reference outside of their claustrophobic political etiquette.  They allow our president to make the oblique declaration that the movement is “not wrong” in order to say something he otherwise couldn’t discuss directly – that we have lost faith in our economic system.  So yeah, I think the movement is kind of important.  Admittedly, it’s also fun to watch.  It’s a classic performance of what often feels like a lost public tradition.  But mostly I find it refreshing that the movement feels so fundamentally human.  NEWSFLASH: All over the world, unlikely little communities are gathering in public squares to think about gravely important matters.  They have resolved to sit down and talk to one another until they figure out what to do.