The Occupy Movement Part I--Why

What is the Occupy movement? What are the secrets to its successes when other groups seeking the same outcomes have failed? Will the Occupy movement continue to succeed? Do they have any unified goals and what are they? What do they have to do to accomplish their goals and can they do it?

I've been thinking about these questions for a while as I've passed the protesters at LaSalle and Jackson and  talked to a few participants. In this post, I'll talk about why I think it came about from my perspective as a former and sometimes Democrat, and always a liberal.

Gut Feelings--Something's Not Right (or Left) Here

I have been wondering if the Occupy movement began for the same reasons my gut has been telling me to stop working with the Democrats. Over the past 3 years or so, I watched my own Democratic party inexplicably move to the right in apparent fear of it's own stated values. I watched John Kerry morph from the Massachusetts-style liberal, sweet grandfatherly figure I got to know in 2003-2004 to the guy who laughed as the Capitol Police were called to arrest single payer health care reformers and remove them from the Senate floor. I watched congressional candidate Dan Seals stop talking about people in favor of deficit reduction plans that rivaled those of Mark Kirk or Bob Dold for being off-topic to the real economic problems in the District. I watched the Israel supporters stop free and open conversation about what is really needed in the Middle East and in American foreign policy, and then watched as the health care reform movement took a page from them to silence all talk of real health care reform.

I couldn't watch action by the Obama Administration against mortgage fraud, mortgage foreclosure fraud, securities fraud and war liars and war profiteers because there was none.

I was consistently told by all the candidate campaigns and self-proclaimed health care reformers, and others who claimed to know, that this is what we had to do to win, but we didn't win, so what was going on here?

Health Care Reform Movement Pushes Progressive Issue and Constituency Groups Over the Edge

During the health care reform debate, MoveOn moved on from actual health care reform to harassing single payer advocates on single payer advocate Internet groups. Citizens Action Illinois, a formerly wonderful organization that helped consumers, the sick, workers and the poor, became wholly owned subsidiary of Health Care for America Now--a group that stole the identity of Healthcare Now!, the original health care reform advocacy group advocating for single payer-- and turned health care reform on its head in favor of the insurance industry and the Obama campaign complete with fake staged debates, town hall takeovers and outright lies about their "public option" and the law that was eventually passed.

Other groups like Democracy for America and Progressive Democrats have had their own problems. DFA cannot figure out if it's an issue group or an arm of the candidate-driven Democratic Party. They claim they work to change the Democratic Party from the bottom up, but at least here in Chicago, they really just canvass for it's candidates, and drink lots of beer and trash talk political gossip between elections. So ineffective in their own area in Chicago, unable to make even a small dent in Chicago's mayoral race, that Chicago's DFA branch now imagines it controls elections out here in the suburbs from some bar on the city's north side.

Progressive Democrats of America/Illinois stay true to their values and base, but never seem to get any traction--perhaps because their Democratic Caucus in Congress has failed to live up to their end, often folding to join Obama or simply ineffective, or perhaps because they've had trouble coming up with a message that resonates with young people. Locally, it doesn't help that there don't appear to be any progressive democrats in Illinois government. Illinois Democrats have become another entity altogether burdened by Madigans' leadership and sometimes going off the deep end altogether in an odd attempt to attract more of the opposing party than their own.

Among the Democrats and their side groups, there's a candidate-driven infrastructure, but there are no unshackled ideas, plans, or values. It's "don't ask, don't tell" on liberalism. They don't think we can win if we hold true to liberal values. The operating plan seems to be to judge which Republican lies have gotten the most traction, and work within them with the claim that while the Republicans are right on the sacrifices ordinary people must make, Democrats will soften the blow.

Monsters, Inc.: Republicans Choose to Go Over the Edge with their Frankenstein-like Base

The one thing I am sure of is that in addition to anything having to do with the Democrats, the Occupy movement comes out of Republicans' failure to acknowledge the humanity of most of humanity and blame of average people for the world's economic problems. Herman Cain, Republican/Koch party frontrunner said it if not best, than most recently:

Don t blame Wall Street. Don t blame the big banks. If you don t have a job and you re not rich, blame yourself.

Republicans have opted for the Xanax and Zoloft course of action. Blame the powerless and rub their noses it it until they become dysfunctional.

They have also chosen to adopt the opinions of the most extreme of their group and push them to their conclusion no matter what. Through talk radio and Fox News, they've ginned up a rather hateful and unforgiving base that they don't seem to be able to control. Now, they have to sign all sorts of pledges against government, women, gays and always be for war, no matter how inappropriate for a given situation. If they don't obey, the base goes after them with frightening venom.

And they never learn. Mark Kirk is now pushing for war with Iran in the exact same way he pushed for war with Iraq. He literally has just changed the "q" to an "n" and I expect one day he'll slip up at some media event. And they don't have to learn because the corporate money is unending and Americans apparently need only to hear something repeated on television a few times for it to become truth.

But Here's the Rub: It is what it is on the ground.

Americans can bellyache about small government that only operates to monitor pregnancy and make war, and call for freedom from health care and other social programs, but they still want and need a social safety net and government works programs. In fact, as their corporate employers revel in lack of regulation and moral standards, Americans need social safety net programs even more.

One stunning statistic about education says a lot about the Occupy movement. Student loan debt is now greater than credit card debt. So, now a young person cannot get a job and cannot go to school. I used to write that we took the younger generations out of the local housing market and forced them to move away from our district. Now, we've pretty much priced them out of everyday life. While corporate profits are at record highs and jobs and job security are at record lows, American kids cannot realistically work on their skills so they can get better jobs or any jobs at all.

For these and other reasons, we have an Occupy movement that has spread from Wall Street, NYC to the rest of the country. You can call them dirty hippies, but they are not looking for the Age of Aquarius and do not want to turn on, tune in or drop out. They really just want to drop in, but we won't let them, so they're pushing the door down, crashing the gate, but for real this time.

The Message that Has Resonated

I've been in group after group grasping for a message that will resonate. We could not end the war in Iraq because the message was deemed unpatriotic. I've been told that you cannot even mention single payer health care reform because the term has been poisoned by Republicans and the media.

"Hope" and "Change" resonated for candidate Obama, but has since become a punch line as its reality faded into a cycle of gridlock and Democratic caving. Now, the best rendition can be found here (scroll down and to the right), a Shepard Fairey style cat and the slogan, "Feed". Yes, bottom line, we all need to be fed.

So what ended up getting the press and social media buzz: "We are the 99 Percent."

In all seriousness, I think part of the success of the 99% is that it is conducive to creative signage (here too) and can be altered in various humorous ways. There's even the 99 purrcent that is supposed to include middle-class cats. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert already proved that Americans prefer political humor to politics. Occupy has learned that lesson and uses it.

The slogan also brings power to the powerless and security to the insecure. The bankers may have money and access to government, but there are more of us. That brings some security to the insecure. Could all these people have done something wrong, as Herman Cain contends from the warmth of the dens of Americans for Prosperity and Koch Industries. That can not be, It must not be my fault and my fault alone that I'm unemployed, insecure and poor because so many others are too.

The other message is to Occupy Wall Street, or your local financial center. It's the historically accurate tea party in action. Not the corporate funded idiots with tea bags hanging from their hats, but the real heirs of the real message of the first tea party--don't let the East India Company (the Koch Industries of the Eighteenth Century) tread on us. Letting corporations make the rules is as bad or worse as letting government. At least with government, we have a vote (until they take that away).

So what do the 99% want to do? Do they have any defined goals? Can they succeed? Should they succeed? How can they succeed?