Brad and the Future of Occupy Wall Street

A very dear person to me linked me to a post by The Infamous Brad. In this post he examines the history of political protests and what that history may show for the future of Occupy Wall Street. A lot of good points were raised about the differences between the protests that worked in the past and what the focus is of the current Occupy Wall Street protests. And while I readily acknowledge the validity of the points raised, I have to disagree with the overall sentiment that the Occupiers are going about things the wrong way and that they're going to fail because of it.

This conclusion is drawn from the history of the Wobblies, better known as the Industrial Workers of the World. The IWW was most active around the Industrial Revolution though they are still an organized active union. The way that the Wobblies got the right to strike was by busing around to protest sites and giving so many numbers to the protests there that the cops couldn't jail them all. Without dedication and sacrifice like that, the article says, OWS is going to fail. Unless all the protestors support the main OWS body in New York by donating time, money or more protestors and not being so spread out over the USA that the numbers are easily dealt with, OWS will fail. That is the part I disagree with.

The protests over in Greece started around the 5th of May in 2010 for many of the same reasons that OWS has sprung up and, to my surprise, they're still going on, over a year later. When I first heard about the riots, I supported them in their cause but beyond that, it was just something going on far, far away. When I hear about protests going on in New York, be it OWS or the various antiwar protests from Bush's era, I'd support them too, but it was still this far removed thing so none of it was actually real to me. Even when OWS protests sprung up in Boston and Philly, I was surprised, but it was still this thing happening in distant lands.

What changed that was when I found out that OWS had finally reached the bastion of conservative ideology known as Oklahoma City. Suddenly, the protests weren't some far removed thing in distant lands; they had landed right into my backyard. I got to see people so disgruntled, so upset with the status quo that they were going to camp out in protest through bitter cold nights, rain, hail and a very near miss with a Tornado cell-cloud. They want change that badly.

Something that wasn't around back in the days of the Industrial Revolution was, obviously, the internet. The internet is a wonderful thing and something we largely take for granted, as evidenced by the article Infamous Brad wrote. The internet makes instant, wireless communication possible; not just text and voice communication, but also images and video. Ever see a movie set in the '40's or '50's, a big news story would break and you'd see reporters beating each other with severed limbs to be the first into the row of phone booths to call their editor?

It's funny, but transported to the 2000's and those same reporters won't be clawing their way to the phone booths; they'll be on their laptops, iPhones or Blackberries to let their editor know the scoop, the only determining factor in how fast the story gets out is by who has the quickest fingers. But with the advent of social networking, such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Skype and whatever else you can think up, you won't even need reporters anymore. Anyone with a camera phone can break a story happening anywhere in the world. We now have phones with 12-megapixel digital cameras built into them. It is now within the power of every John Q out there to be the first to report a revolutionary protest or post topless photos of himself on Craigslist so his can cheat on his wife.

One of the ideas behind the Wobblies' strategy was to gain public awareness for their cause to bring about change. But while they had to rely on the good graces of the Old Media to get their message out to the masses, we now have the internet.

So far, instead of dwindling, we've seen OWS spread to Europe, the Tundra and Antarctica. There are stirs being felt in India and Putin has Russia scrambling to stave off protests there while China has put a gag order on it's media regarding OWS content.

I'm not sure how far OWS will go when all is said and done, but even if it does fade out, it will have made people and governments take notice that the status quo is on shaky ground. It has spread to levels the IWW of the Industrial Revolution could have only dreamed of and over a third of America supports them.