Forum Post: Open Letter to Occupy - Now is the Time for Clear Messaging!

First of all, I congratulate you! You've done a great job bringing attention to the fact we have some serious challenges in our societal, economic, and political systems. I applaud and support your actions to date.

Now what?

You have the attention of the public. Many are on the sidelines watching and waiting. Many are cautiously supporting you. Many of them aren't sure what you are. Many of them are waiting see what you will become before they will commit to throwing their support behind you. You have reached a critical juncture, the point where you will either galvanize the broader public behind you, or eventually fade from broad-based relevance.

I understand your wariness at putting forth specific, detailed demands, and I’d suggest you neither need nor want that anyway. Specific demands will allow those who want to stop you to place the focus on and dismantle the demands and to marginalize you in the process. However, you do need to establish a clear and cohesive message that crystallizes what you are about in the minds of the public, and a message that the broader public that is watching from the sidelines can get behind.

If you don't do this, and do it soon, you leave yourself vulnerable to being cast in an unfavorable light. The people that view you as a threat are already trying to do this. You need to clearly communicate what you are!

I know you are a diverse group of many ideas and perspectives, as we all are, but you need a central organizing theme, that is easily communicated in a sound bite, and clearly expresses what you are all about. I can’t tell you what that theme is, of course, but having observed you I know I’ve formed an impression of what I hope you are about. And it is this…

I hope that you are a rebellion against the rule of money and the subversion of our democracy. That’s it. This is a central organizing theme that is easily communicated and will coalesce support from the broader public behind your movement, while leaving plenty of room for defining demands and policy to bring it to fruition.

If this is truly what you are about, then I would suggest the drafting of a “Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule”. This declaration should demand sweeping structural changes that are based on some clearly articulated, high-level Guiding Principles that set out the course of direction our union needs to take to restore our democracy. It should not contain specific policy demands or solutions. The time for such detail is not now because the detail can be picked apart and used against you. What you want to do now is to energize broader support, and guiding principles that the public will get behind are the way to accomplish this. Let our representatives come up with the solutions that fit the principles, and if they don’t do so, then will be the time for further elaboration of demands and action via the ballot box.

The form these Guiding Principles take is, of course, up to you, but I would suggest a few, as will post in replies to this.

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