Forum Post: A Look Back to Late 2011
Posted 11 years ago on March 25, 2013, 8:24 p.m. EST by OTP
(-203)
from Tampa, FL
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Interested in thoughts on this video. Reactions, suggestions, etc.
See, I don't see political parties as anything more than a forum for those who make up the party. So in that sense, a party can never usurp a movement but can only incorporate it.
It was true with the Tea Party, the New Democrats, and the Reagan revolution in our time. And it was true for the civil rights movements, women's rights movements and all the other politically active movement that becomes successful.
Finding solidarity with one of the two parties might minimize the change that the movement embraces, but, in my opinion, it is probably the only way anything can ever get done. From a historical perspective, it was a good thing that one of the parties was interested in the message Occupy conveyed. To not have embraced their overtures, might have even been a lost opportunity by Occupy.
Although, what kind of revolution would this be if we chose the same avenues that our ancestors chose?
I think that they wanted desperately to coopt so that they had anything like the Tea Party. They failed. I think that this was shown by their very late attempt to start their own grass movement.
The problem is that there was no chance in hell that they could pretend that Democrats were not also in bed with Wall Street. When it got down and dirty and Democrats were also shown to care only about reelection then it became too much of a risk.
What saved OWS, in my opinion, is that the focus stayed on Wall Street. That said, Cantor would benefit greatly if he could coopt it too. Otherwise, we wouldn't have the issues on the forum that we do. Yeah?